Go!
“Go!” Did you ever feel those words? I use the word feel because that is often how we hear God’s voice to us. We do sometimes hear in our minds, but more often we feel in our selves. We become aware of a deep unrest or an intense desire or a conviction that there is something we should do. After some time of enduring this awareness we stop and ask ourselves, “Is God telling me something?”
For David and me, “Go!’ meant go to Japan and live there, preaching Christ to anyone who will listen. For my son Dave, “Go!” meant go to New Orleans for a week and join a group of people who are repairing flood damaged houses. For the Christians in South Africa “Go” means joining a reconciliation group and praying and talking until forgiveness takes the place of hatred. “Go” has brought Christians from their lands to ours to tell us how we can be better neighbors to them.
It is an intensely exciting time when we first become aware of the command to ‘go’ and prepare to obey. Did Abram check with anyone to confirm that he was truly being divinely led and not following impulses? We are not told that he did, but his wife and nephew went with him, perhaps they had been told and had agreed that God was speaking to him.
Abram’s father: what happened to him? His father, who was named Nahor had once set out on the same journey to go from Ur in Mesopotamia to Palestine, but he had gone the long way round, presumably to avoid a desert crossing, and stopped half way. The travelers reached Haran in modern Turkey and stayed there. Abram’s father died in a place that was neither his homeland nor his destination. Why did he stop halfway? We do not know. But one thing I do notice is that not all the people who start out on a great adventure with God continue that adventure. Some who seemed most promising have now become most half-hearted in their involvement with God.
I remember her well, but not her name. She was living next door to a friend of mine and asked her how she could become a Christian. It was such a surprising change, this rather difficult young woman had suddenly become mature, (Yes she even irritated us all by doing a bit of preaching to us, who had been Christians for years) I remember her coming to my house to tell me that God had called her to care for orphaned children. I was a bit skeptical, she had only been a Christian a few months, and she had no training and no money to do the job. But with a few months there she was a Methodist deaconess living and working in a home for orphaned children. She stayed there, feeling fulfilled. , She had obeyed the command to ‘Go’ and from that day forward life became a great adventure.
How can anyone be satisfied with a life that is not entrusted to and involved with God? A life that is not tied into God must surely be empty. To never hear The Voice, or if it is heard to be afraid to obey; how sorry I am for those people. I so urgently long that they could stop and listen and not be afraid of God or of other people’s derision. So hard for those people who must depend solely upon themselves and their own good personality and wonderful skills - but all alone far from the Divine Being who longs to bless and prosper them.
For David and me, “Go!’ meant go to Japan and live there, preaching Christ to anyone who will listen. For my son Dave, “Go!” meant go to New Orleans for a week and join a group of people who are repairing flood damaged houses. For the Christians in South Africa “Go” means joining a reconciliation group and praying and talking until forgiveness takes the place of hatred. “Go” has brought Christians from their lands to ours to tell us how we can be better neighbors to them.
It is an intensely exciting time when we first become aware of the command to ‘go’ and prepare to obey. Did Abram check with anyone to confirm that he was truly being divinely led and not following impulses? We are not told that he did, but his wife and nephew went with him, perhaps they had been told and had agreed that God was speaking to him.
Abram’s father: what happened to him? His father, who was named Nahor had once set out on the same journey to go from Ur in Mesopotamia to Palestine, but he had gone the long way round, presumably to avoid a desert crossing, and stopped half way. The travelers reached Haran in modern Turkey and stayed there. Abram’s father died in a place that was neither his homeland nor his destination. Why did he stop halfway? We do not know. But one thing I do notice is that not all the people who start out on a great adventure with God continue that adventure. Some who seemed most promising have now become most half-hearted in their involvement with God.
I remember her well, but not her name. She was living next door to a friend of mine and asked her how she could become a Christian. It was such a surprising change, this rather difficult young woman had suddenly become mature, (Yes she even irritated us all by doing a bit of preaching to us, who had been Christians for years) I remember her coming to my house to tell me that God had called her to care for orphaned children. I was a bit skeptical, she had only been a Christian a few months, and she had no training and no money to do the job. But with a few months there she was a Methodist deaconess living and working in a home for orphaned children. She stayed there, feeling fulfilled. , She had obeyed the command to ‘Go’ and from that day forward life became a great adventure.
How can anyone be satisfied with a life that is not entrusted to and involved with God? A life that is not tied into God must surely be empty. To never hear The Voice, or if it is heard to be afraid to obey; how sorry I am for those people. I so urgently long that they could stop and listen and not be afraid of God or of other people’s derision. So hard for those people who must depend solely upon themselves and their own good personality and wonderful skills - but all alone far from the Divine Being who longs to bless and prosper them.
posted by Jessie Coates at 11:57 PM
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