you? Perhaps it's your IQ. Your mom always said you were smart. Maybe it's your keen sense of style. God thought you could make God look good. Or maybe it was the fact that you're a type-A go-getter, and God wants a high-functioning, action-oriented winner on His team.
Did God call you to Christ through his word and draw you to the waters of baptism, marking you as his own and placing every promise of the cross upon your life, because God saw something awesome in you? No. God called you to Christ for the same reason he called those original 12 disciples: because you make an excellent object lesson on the depths of God's grace and the scope of God's power.
- You, with your rebellious heart.
- You, with your secret struggles.
- You, with your lack of faith and your long list of faults.
- You, who knows deep down that you are unworthy to tie God's shoes let alone be called God's child.
God chose you so that the world might look at you and see that God is indescribably merciful and incredibly powerful.
That said, the question that you may be asking at this point is, "So what?" We can proclaim the truth that God has chosen us completely out of mercy all day long (and we should) but what's the action step? How does this truth get lived out in our lives?
The answer is found in the actions of the disciples. What do we see them doing the moment after Jesus comes and taps them on the shoulder? What do we see them doing when a rabbi comes and makes it clear that he wants them?
They dropped everything and followed. They dropped their nets. James and John left their dad! Why? Because when something you don't deserve but desperately want comes knocking at your door, you don't tell it to wait five minutes. You answer that door as fast as you can.
We're all disciples. We've each been given something we don't deserve but desperately need: an encounter with Christ. And our task each day is to see this life with Jesus as an undeserved invitation. It's an undeserved invitation to drop our plans and follow him wherever he leads, knowing and trusting that wherever he takes us is better and more beautiful than whatever else we had planned.
