Verse: Galatians 1:1-2
Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 2 and all the brothers and sisters with me,
Devotion
A couple of years ago we went on a trip to Belize with our youth group. We quickly finished all the jobs at this little church in the woods, and so they asked us if we would “sand” the walls of the church (which were made of concrete blocks) so they could paint them. Because we didn’t have sand paper, we “sanded” with….get this….other concrete blocks. We broke them into pieces and rubbed concrete against concrete.
I’m fairly certain now, as I was then, that this was not necessary. I think they ran out of stuff for us to do and felt bad, so they made work up. I know that sounds terrible, and it’s fine, we loved our trip, and even more, we loved the people we met. But still. As I stood in the billion degree heat scrubbing concrete against concrete I was not feeling a great sense of purpose in my work.
What I love about the opening sentence of the book of Galatians, is the sense of calling that Paul is living his life by. He introduces himself as someone not sent by or from man, but instead as someone sent by God.
I wonder, in your life, do you feel a sense of purpose from God? A sense of mission or “sent-ness?” Put another way, do you know what God is calling you to do in your life? That can be kind of a daunting question. It can feel like there is one golden opportunity and if you don’t listen really closely to God you’ll miss it. I don’t think it’s like that.
I think it is more of a daily keeping in step with the Spirit as he leads you. And as we commit our lives to living like this, the purposes of God unfold for us. We can sense God’s call from the daily small things like loving our neighbors, being generous, or even just being nice to the person in Wawa. But we can also then develop a larger sense of God’s call towards what we do in our church, what we do as a vocation, and who we serve in our lives.
The general idea is, are we living with a heart to know God’s leading, or not? It’s definitely a different way of living. But in the end, if we do things without God, we are basically just scraping concrete blocks. But when we connect our lives to the leading of God’s Spirit, we never know what eternal significance our lives can have!
Prayer
I pray, Lord, that you would lead me. Open my heat and my eyes to see your hand in my life.
Author: Christian Dunn
Recent Comments