Thursday, April 24, 2014

God Calls You What He Makes You

The discovery of WHO WE ARE began long before we knew how to crawl, walk or run.  It began as an infant, laying in a crib, staring up at a mobile, reaching for it, until we noticed our hands.  Hands that carry the DNA of potential.  Hands that someday will be different things to different people. 
  • Who am I? 
  • Who will I become? 
  • What am I here for?  
  • What is my purpose? 
  • What is my Life Call?
We crawl through childhood, from tonka trucks to ten speeds, moving through the maze of adolescence. Too old to play with toys, yet too childlike to be an adult, wondering where we fit. 

Still, we ask, "Who am I?"

Why do we have such an interest in knowing who we are? Where does this need come from? Is it for this reason that we go back to our creator, in a desperate attempt to find out more about ourselves? 

If anyone holds the answer to this question surely it is God.  Afterall, He is our creator. Psalms 100:3b "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves."

The discovery process can reveal the grace of God from our infancy to our adulthood. We need only to look to the Bible to see a man by the name of Jacob who also asked the same questions on his pilgrimage.

Jacob - a Bible hero.
Jacob - a limping leader.
Jacob - a struggler and a wrestler.

In all of his upbringing, he finagled his way through life manipulating and tricking others. It was only when his trickery brought him to a dead end that he began to struggle with God for an answer.

His very name means "supplanter" or "trickster."  He was a modern day "con man" who found himself alone with God.  There, alone with God, in the isolation of his internal strife, God began the process of taking him from DISGRACE into GRACE.  It only took one encounter with a God he couldn't "out slick" to bring Jacob's leg to a limp and his fist into a hand clasped in prayer. 

He cries out to God, "I won't let you go until you bless me!"  It is then and there that God tells him what he needs to know.  He tells Jacob that he is not who he thinks he is. In fact, he is really Israel, a PRINCE! (Genesis 32:24-30)

It's no different for us.  When we begin to seek God, He will eventually show us our real identity.  There in Jacob's struggle...God gave him his greatest treasure...He gave him his NAME!

Friends, God has given you a NAME and an ASSIGNMENT to match!  It is God that calls you what He makes you!
  • He calls you HEALED even if you have to limp to the altar!
  • He calls you BLESSED even if you don't have two nickels to rub together!
  • He calls you FRIEND even if everyone has walked off and left you!
He speaks those things that BE NOT as though THEY WERE! (Romans 4:17)  

Don't let anyone label you into being something you are not!  
  • Your teachers may have called you DUMB. 
  • Your parents may have called you a MISTAKE.
  • Your family may have called you an ACCIDENT.
  • Your peers may have called you a REJECT.
BUT, YOU DON'T HAVE TO ACT OUT WHAT EVERYONE HAS SAID YOU ARE!  

Take a hold of the WORD of God over your life, cling to God in prayer and God will give you your REAL IDENTITY!  

Someone today needs to realize that you could be a PRINCE and not really know it! If you pray, God will give you a NAME!