This morning in my time with God
I was surprised by the direction and focus He gave me. Preparation...
I don't feel like I'm preparing for anything right now and truly feel I'm
prepared for what I'm doing but being open to following God's direction I’ve focused
a little deeper on the word he gave me, preparation.
My "scheduled" passage
of NT scripture this morning was Luke 5:1-11. It's a familiar story of Jesus
calling his first disciples and having meditated, study and taught on the
passage numerous times in the past, I had some thoughts going into it about its
meaning. My thoughts on this area have always been of being ready, obedience
and provision. But preparation has never been something I gave much
thought to.
“Master, we toiled all night and
took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had
done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.
Luke 5: 8-9 ESV
For the first time this old passage meant something new to
me given my focus on preparation, I saw this as way of Jesus preparing these
men to follow Him. He had never met them
and they had no reason or basis to place any trust in Him but fulfilling a
specific need they had obviously got their attention. They had fished all night and had nothing to
show for it but at a simple direction from Jesus, they had more than they could
take into the boat. See, Jesus knew that
for them to be obedient to His call to follow Him, He would have to create a
basis for that trust. Imagine how easy
it was for those men to drop what they were doing to follow Christ now. Now that He had prepared them properly and
they knew that doing as He said and leaving their profession behind would not
leave them without provision. Jesus knew He must prepare them to trust Him.
Now what does preparation mean to me? I’m going to spend some time working that out
but I know one thing for sure….
For this light momentary
affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all
comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that
are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are
unseen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:17-18 ESV
No matter what we are going through God is preparing us for
something. We just need to be open to
hearing His voice and being obedient to follow.
