A young lady visited with my wife yesterday. She had felt God's call to missions and even had some definite ideas about the kind of ministry and where she felt God calling her to go. She was passionate about doing what God wanted and ready to head off on this adventure.
As I read this morning, about the calling of the twelve disciples, I began to wonder if this is how they felt when Jesus singled them out to be with Him and work where He was working.
Jesus called, and they were the ones that He wanted. Their jobs were to go out and preach some message, and they were also to cast out demons from those afflicted.
Jesus calls those he wants to follow. Is His call also heard by those that do not choose to follow? What was the message they were to preach? How did they receive the power to cast out demons? Jesus knew how they would all work out in this job, so why Judas?
Speaking of Judas, did he preach? Did he cast out demons? What was he thinking all this time?
Jesus also knows how each of us will turn out after we hear the call and obey, coming to Him. I hear a call to follow, I respond by saying I will. My zeal may be high, my purpose fixed in my mind, but only God knows how it will all work out. I am only a bit player in a huge drama, here for a purpose, but not seeing the particulars of the overall storyline.
The twelve, when they followed, had no idea of what their lives would become. They had an idea that Jesus could be the Promised One of Israel, but it was not the same idea that God had. They were right to follow, but their lives had to undergo a transformation before they understood much of the story. There would be a lot of questions along the way, some disillusionment, some doubting, more questions, all of which dogged their lives all the way through the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit. They knew not the path that each of them would travel, they only knew, at that point in time, that Jesus had called them and they wanted to follow.
My prayer of response to all of this:
Dear Jesus, I sense Your call on my life. I have always felt You had me in Your sights, that You knew me by name, and that You wanted me to be available to You for Your purpose.
Help me not to try to find my purpose in what I can do, but what You can do through me. Help me to continue to just be available and able to listen so that I hear Your call among the other calls of the world around me. Help me not to worry about how it will work out in the end, just that it will work out.
Help me not to try to continually see the end of the path You have put me on, but just to recognize what the Light shows in front of me, and follow where that Light leads.
Help me to play that part that You have written just for me.
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