A New Call
Good Morning Friends,
Yesterday afternoon I saw a visual manifestation of the devotion I had written earlier that day about strength in numbers. The location was a Starbucks where I pick up food donations for our partners. I always use the opportunity to minister to the needs of the workers who know me and the clientele if the opportunity in the Spirit permits it. That morning I had written about peas in a pod and the support of friends to make possible the harvest and the image mirroring this message were three diminutive young college students on Spring break huddled around their laptops and coffee in obvious support of each other. I engaged them with a smile and told them the image of the three of them was really cool. Around the table were a business major, a graphic artist and the third one engaged to be married and plans on going into a ministry with her new husband in Las Vegas. So today I write in honor of those kairos moments and for an anointing for those responding to A New Call.
Scripture: Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without murmuring and arguing, so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world. It is by your holding fast to the word of life that I can boast on the day of Christ that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. But even if I am being poured out as a libation over the sacrifice and the offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you– and in the same way you also must be glad and rejoice with me.
Philippians 2:12-18 (NRSV)
Message: It is one of the great mysteries of the Christian life that we are to be both player and spectator when it comes to our salvation. As Philippians 2 makes clear we are to work out our own salvation with the emotional and spiritual awareness that only God, and God alone, can make those lasting changes in us. So we must be engaged in the process. We must say yes when called. We must live our lives as if we are cosigning with God every check and credit card receipt we write. The one thing we can do, must do is to get in the game, please get in the game. When you have that feeling that God is working on some aspect of your life, please join Him in the experience so that your salvation, your joy… no His Salvation and His joy would be reflected in you more fully. When you receive a call from God to be a servant, a disciple be prepared for God’s question, your Lord’s question and nudging of when to be a player and when to be a spectator. Here is the deal, God will not force Himself on you. You have a choice to set your own direction or to follow His lead, to engage in life’s greatest joy or just watch.
Pray we be an outworking of God’s working in us. Pray we are childlike but not childish. Pray we share our faith. Pray
that those going into ministry do not do it alone. Pray that partnerships find the way to accomplish together what is impossible without the strength of unity entwined. Pray we redeem not just clock time but karios time as well.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 