God is knocking at the door

If God showed up on your doorstep and told you that he would now be using you to glorify His Kingdom, how would you respond? Would you change certain things about your life? Would you live differently or act differently? Would you tell Him "No thanks" and shut the door? If God wants to use you to glorify his name would you be willing to participate? Are you ready to participate?

I heard a very amazing sermon this morning at the Austin Stone about how God chooses the weakest, the most sinful, the least expected and the unwilling to share the His story and to spread His word. He has also chooses people with a past, people that may have problems in their family, less than perfect parents, you name it. There are countless examples in the bible in which God chooses people that have done horrible things, things in which we as humans would never forgive, to carry out His glory. This sermon really hit me hard today because it made me realize that everyone, including myself and you, are potential disciples of God and that at any moment or all moments, he could be working in us to teach a lesson to the world. The most amazing part of this is that he would even consider people like you and I for such an important task.

As I started thinking more about it, I realized that it all makes perfect sense. You see, if God's kingdom was all about being perfect and about people that live perfect lives, it would be irrelevant to our lives because our lives are far from perfect. We as humans are flawed and will never be without sin so if sin was the deciding factor, the kingdom of God would not be for us. Thankfully, because Jesus gave his own life on the cross, our sin is not the deciding factor but rather our faith in God. Thus in order to teach relevant lessons God must use people, and thus he must use flawed or sinful people as sin is present in all people.

So would you do things differently if you knew God was using you for something greater than you? Should you do things differently, or is the whole point that you do what your heart desires and the lesson is taught because you did what you did or do what you do?

Now what if God showed up at your door step to tell you about his plan to use your life, rang the doorbell, and you didn't answer? Maybe its distractions of life, maybe its a bad friendship or relationship that was blinding you, or maybe it was a desire for money and success that kept you from hearing the "knocking at the door". Maybe your life is going great right now and you just aren't paying attention. Would you care? Would you be happy you didn't hear it so you could continue on living in your own ways? Or would you regret it with everything you had?

I want to be sitting on the front porch, waiting for him to drive up! I don't want him to have to get out of the car. Oh wait, he is already here and waiting.

Speakin my mind
-EC