"Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed." (Psalm 139:16)
These are the kinds of verses that keep theologians up at night. If God had already recorded every moment of David's life before he ever lived it, what does that say for his choices? Does that make him a sort of robot? How can he be made responsible for his actions when God already mapped out his life?
I don't know. To try and find answers to questions like these seems to me an attempt to play God. I go on the assumption that God is operating on a whole different level of engagement than my little pea brain can negotiate. How God can have a person's life mapped out and still make them responsible for the choices they make is one of those things I have come to just believe even though it doesn't make sense in my head. There are limitations to being human.
What I can know about this, however, is how significant this makes everything in my life. Nothing is happening to me by accident. My moments were all thought up in the mind of God, and they are all geared toward shaping me for a particular service that no one but I can perform. God uses everything in my life – whatever I've experienced, whatever I've learned – to make me into a person fit for that which I can do in his Kingdom here on earth. And the same is true for you.
We are not autonomous, isolated individuals – masters of our own fate and servants of no one. We are actually a part of a grand display wherein the lives of billions upon billions are intertwined together. What we do affects those around us, and God has taken all that into account.
Therefore, if my life is that important, and God has already recorded it and mapped it out, doesn't that make it even more compelling that I find out what it is that he has for me to do? This is not a chore; it's a privilege and an adventure.
God does not intend to waste anything in my life, or yours. Our talents, gifts, and natural abilities all go together to make someone fit to serve.
Gotta serve somebody
Gotta serve somebody
May be the devil; may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.
— Bob Dylan
We may be small, but we are by no means insignificant.
PURPOSE DRIVEN MINISTRIES by John Fisher © 2007. All rights reserved. (Please include this line to forward the message).
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