[A Monday / Wednesday / Friday Devotional Feature of the First Road Blog]You can’t believe it! You were selected! Selected by the Owner of the franchise! You’re on the inside track! You’ve gone through some basic training and you’ve just come back from your first big assignment. Success exudes from your pores.
The
Coach pulls out his iPhone. You wait. He looks at you and smiles. When he
speaks you realize he’s talking to the Owner. You hear him thank him for
signing you on. His excitement brings visions of crowded seminars where you
outline your secrets of success. You had not realized before that your shirt
was getting a little snug. He looks at you again, smiles again, and adds…
“I
know he’s not very bright, and he certainly isn’t a savvy kind of guy when it
comes to life issues. In fact, yeah, he’s really quite immature.”
Can
you imagine that!? More to the point, can you imagine Jesus saying something
like that!?
Well, he did say it – he said it in the presence of at least seventy men who had just fulfilled an assignment in grand fashion. As they celebrated he prayed, “I thank you,
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the
wise and prudent, and revealed them to babes.”
We
spoke about this in our Men’s Bible Study recently, and we reminded ourselves the
message of the Gospel makes this analysis bearable because there is an important implication. Like those disciples, we have no claim to any self-importance in
coming to Christ. But when we come (and even before we come) we are, in his eyes, the
raw material for trophies of grace. He gives guiding light to the not too bright, life truth to the naive, and Christ-like maturity to the childish. He is the
epitome of coaches, teachers, and leaders. He gets excited over raw material.
AMEN
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