Be Everything God Wants You to Be

 

Be Everything God Wants You to Be

Be Everything God Wants You to Be - Audio/Visual 

He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as engravers, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers — all of them skilled workers and designers. (Exodus 35:35)

You were born pre-packed. God looked at your entire life, determined your assignment and gave you the tools to do the job. Does that surprise you? If so, don’t you do the same thing before going on a trip? You consider the demands of the journey, and you pack accordingly. Cold weather? Bring a jacket. Business meeting? Carry the laptop. Time with the grandkids? Pack your track shoes. And God has done the same with you. John will research animals – install curiosity. Sally will lead a private school – add an extra dose of management. I need Jim to comfort the sick – include a healthy share of compassion. "Each of us is an original," Paul said to the Galatian Christians. (Gal. 5:26 - MSG) God packed you on purpose for a purpose. And if that’s news to you, maybe you’re living out of the wrong bag.

I once grabbed the wrong bag at the airport. The luggage looked like mine. Same size. Same material. Same color. Thrilled that it had emerged early from the baggage catacombs, I yanked it off the carousel and headed for the hotel. One glance inside, however, and I knew I'd made a mistake. Wrong size, style and . . . gender. What would you do if that happened to you? You could make do with what you had, I guess; cram your body into tight clothes, deck out in other-gender jewelry, and head out for your appointments. But would you? Probably not. You'd likely hunt down your own bag, instead. Issue an all-points bulletin; call the airport; call the airlines; call the taxi service; call the FBI. You'd try every possible way to find the person who can't find her suitcase and is wondering what kind of idiot would fail to check the nametag. No one wants to live out of someone else's bag. Then why do we?

Odds are someone has urged a force fit into clothes not packed for you. Parents do. Dad puts an arm around his young son’s shoulder and says, "Your great-grandfather was a farmer. Your grandfather was a farmer. I'm a farmer. And you, my son, will someday inherit the farm." A teacher might. She warns the young girl who wants to be a stay-at-home mom, "Don't squander your skills. With your gifts you could make it to the top. The professional world is the way to go." Maybe. Church leaders assign luggage from the pulpit, too. "God seeks world-changing, globetrotting missionaries. Jesus was a missionary. So, do you want to please your Maker? Then follow him into the holy vocation. Spend your life on foreign soil." Sound counsel or poor advice? That depends on what God packed in the person's bag.

An inherited farm blesses the agronomist and physically active. But what if God fashioned the farmer's son with a passion for literature or medicine? Work outside the home might be a great choice for some, but what if God gave the girl a singular passion for kids and homemaking? Those wired to learn languages and blaze trails should listen carefully to sermons encouraging missionary service. But if foreign cultures frustrate you, while predictability invigorates you, would you be happy as a missionary? No, and you’d end up contributing to some worrisome statistics – seven out of ten people are neither motivated nor competent to perform the basics of their job, and 43% of employees feel anger toward their employer often, or very often as a result of feeling overworked. Feel the force of those figures.

You wonder why work-bound commuters seem so cranky? Fully 70% of us go to work without much enthusiasm or passion. So, if 70% of us dread Mondays, dream of Fridays, and slog through the rest of the week, is it any wonder that our relationships suffer? Not to mention that our work suffers, and our health suffers. Those kinds of numbers qualify as an epidemic. An epidemic of commonness. It’s like someone sucked the sparkle out of our days, or the air out of the room. A stale fog has settled over our society. Week after week of energy-sapping sameness. Walls painted gray with routine. Commuters dragging their dread to the office. Buildings packed with people working to live rather than living to work. Boredom. Mediocrity. So, what’s the cure? God's prescription begins with unpacking your bags.

You exited the womb uniquely equipped. David put it this way: "My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." (Ps. 139:15-16) You just can’t be anything you want to be and be fulfilled. But you can be everything God wants you to be. In the passage, David emphasizes the pronoun "you" as if to say "you, God, and you alone," and "the secret place" suggests a hidden and safe place, concealed from evil. Just like an artist takes a canvas into a locked studio, so God took you into his hidden chamber where you were "woven together." Moses used the same word to describe the needlework of the tabernacle's inner curtains – stitched together by skillful hands for the highest purpose. (See Exod. 35:35; 36:8; 38:9)

The Master Weaver selected the threads of your temperament, the texture of your character, and the yarn of your personality – all before you were born. God didn’t drop you into the world utterly defenseless and empty-handed. You arrived fully equipped. "All (your) days (were) ordained,” as David says. The day of your birth and the day of your death. Days of difficulty and days of victory. What motivates you, what exhausts you . . . God authored, and authors it still. Other translations of this Psalm employ equally intriguing verbs: You . . . knit me together. (Psalm 139:13) I was sculpted from nothing into something. (v. 15) I was . . . intricately wrought – as if embroidered with various colors. (v. 15)

How would you answer this multiple-choice question? I am: (a) a coincidental collision of particles; (b) an accidental evolution of molecules; (c) random flotsam on the sea of life; or (d) "fearfully and wonderfully made." (v. 14) Don't dull your life by missing this point: you are more than statistical chance, more than a marriage of heredity and society, more than a confluence of inherited chromosomes and childhood trauma. Thanks to God, you have been "sculpted from nothing into something." (v. 15) Envision Rodin carving The Thinker out of a rock. The sculptor chisels away a chunk of stone, shapes the curve of a kneecap, sands the forehead . . . Now envision God doing the same: sculpting the way you are before you even were, engraving you with an eye for organization, or an ear for fine music, or a mind that understands quantum physics. He made you you-nique.

Secular thinking, as a whole, doesn't buy this. Secular society sees no author behind the book, no architect behind the house, no purpose behind or beyond life. It simply says, "You can be anything you want to be." Be a butcher if you want to, a sales rep if you’d like. Be an ambassador if you really care. You can be anything you want to be – if you work hard enough. But can you? If God didn't pack within you the meat sense of a butcher, the people skills of a salesperson, or the world vision of an ambassador, can you be one? An unhappy, dissatisfied one perhaps. But a fulfilled one? No.

Can an acorn become a rose, a whale fly like a bird, or lead become gold? No. You cannot be anything you want to be and be fully content. But you can be everything God wants you to be and find your purpose. God never prefabricates or mass-produces people. "I make all things new," he declares. (Rev. 21:5) He didn't hand you your grandfather's bag or your aunt's life; he personally and deliberately packed you. When you live out of the bag God gave, you discover an uncommon joy. One job-placement firm suggests that only 1 percent of its clients have made a serious study of their skills. So, don't imitate the mistakes of the 99%. "Don't live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants." (Eph. 5:17) You can do something no one else can do in a fashion that no one else can perform. Exploring and extracting your uniqueness is exciting, it honors God, and expands his kingdom. So "make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that." (Gal. 6:4) Charles Steinmetz did.

Charlie designed the generators that powered Henry Ford's first assembly lines in Dearborn, Michigan. Sometime after he retired, the generators stalled out, bringing the entire plant to a screeching halt. Ford's engineers couldn't figure out the problem, so Henry called his old friend, Charlie. Steinmetz fiddled with this gauge, jiggled that lever, tried this button, played with a few wires, and after a few hours threw the main switch. The motors kicked on, and the system returned to normal. Some days later Ford received a bill from Steinmetz for $10,000.00. Ford found the charge a little excessive and wrote his friend a note: "Charlie: It seems awfully steep, this $10,000, for a man who for just a little while tinkered around with a few motors." Steinmetz prepared a new, itemized bill and sent it back to Mr. Ford with a note. "Henry: For tinkering around with motors, $10.00; for knowing where to tinker, $9,990.00." Ford paid the bill.

You tinker unlike anyone else. Explore and extract your tinker talent. A gift far greater than $10,000.00 awaits you. "Remember that the Lord will give a reward to everyone . . . for doing good." (Eph. 6:8) When you do the most with what you do best, you put a smile on God's face. So, be everything God wants you to be and see what happens. You may be surprised.

Grace,

Randy

What's This World Coming To?

 

What’s This World Coming To?

What's This World Coming To? - Audio/Visual

So, I want to remind you, though you already know these things, that Jesus first rescued the nation of Israel from Egypt, but later he destroyed those who did not remain faithful. And I remind you of the angels who did not stay within the limits of authority God gave them but left the place where they belonged. God has kept them securely chained in prisons of darkness, waiting for the great Day of judgment. And don’t forget Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighboring towns, which were filled with immorality and every kind of sexual perversion. Those cities were destroyed by fire and serve as a warning of the eternal fire of God’s judgment. (Jude 5-7)

My dad, as part of his responsibilities at work, traveled quite a bit. Sometimes to Australia. Sometimes to Corcoran – a cotton town in California’s San Joaquin valley. And mom would use his coming home as both a comfort and a caution. In fact, she could do both with the same phrase. For instance, with soft assurance she’d say, "Your dad will be home soon," or with clenched jaw threaten, "Your dad will be home soon." But whether it was assurance or warning, mom made it clear: dad's coming would be a big deal. And it was. Dad's return changed everything.

The return of Christ will do likewise. Jude had a name for this event: "the great Day." (Jude 6) The great Day will be a normal day. People will drink coffee, endure traffic jams, laugh at jokes and talk about the weather. “The Arrival of the Son of Man will take place in times like Noah's. Before the great flood everyone was carrying on as usual, having a good time right up to the day Noah boarded the ark. They knew nothing – until the flood hit and swept everything away.” (Matt. 24:37-39)

The tourists on Thailand's coast come to mind. They spent the morning of December 26, 2004, applying suntan lotion and throwing beach balls, completely unaware that a tsunami-stirred wave, 167 feet tall, was moving toward them at the speed of a jetliner. Christ's coming will be equally unexpected. Most people will be oblivious, playing on the beach. His shout, however, will get our attention. "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout." (1 Thess. 4:16) Before we see angels, hear trumpets, or embrace our grandparents, we will be engulfed by Jesus' voice. John heard the voice of God and compared it to "the sound of many waters." (Revelation 1:15) Maybe you've stood at the base of a waterfall that was so loud and full of fury that you had to shout to be heard. Or maybe you've heard the roar of a lion. When the king of the beasts opens his mouth, every head in the jungle lifts up. The King of kings will prompt the same response: "The Lord will roar from on high." (Jeremiah 25:30)

Lazarus heard that roar. His body was entombed, and his soul was in paradise when Jesus shouted into both places: "[Jesus] cried with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come forth!' And he who had died came out." (John 11:43-44) Expect the same shout and shaking of the corpses on the great Day. "The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God. . . . All who are . . . in their graves will hear his voice. Then they will come out." (John 5:25, 28-29) The shout of God will trigger the "voice of an archangel . . . with the trumpet of God." (1 Thess. 4:16) The archangel is the commanding officer. He will dispatch armies of angels to their greatest mission: to gather the children of God into one great assembly.

Envision these dazzling messengers spilling out of the heavens and into the atmosphere. You could count the winter snowflakes more quickly than you will be able to number these hosts. Jude announced that "the Lord is coming with thousands and thousands of holy angels to judge everyone." (verses 14-15) The population of God's armies was too high for John to count. He saw "ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands." (Rev. 5:11) They minister to the saved and battle the devil. They keep you safe and clear your path. "He has put his angels in charge of you to watch over you wherever you go." (Psalm 91:11) And on the great Day, they will escort you into the skies, where you will meet God. "He'll dispatch the angels; they will pull in the chosen from the four winds, from pole to pole." (Mark 13:27) Whether you’re in Corcoran, California or paradise, if you're a follower of Jesus, you can count on an angelic chaperone into the greatest gathering in history.

We assume the demons will gather the rebellious. We aren't told. We are told, however, that the saved and lost alike will witness the assembly. "All the nations will be gathered before him." (Matthew 25:32) The Population Reference Bureau estimates that a little over 117 billion people have been born since the dawn of the human race. Every single one of them will stand in the great assembly of souls. In other words, he who made us will convene us. "The LORD, who scattered his people, will gather them." (Jeremiah 31:10) "All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God." (Isaiah 52:10) At some point in this grand collection, our spirits will be reunited with our new bodies: “It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.” (1 Cor. 15:52-53)

Paradise will give up her souls. The earth will give up her dead, and the sky will stage a reunion of spirit and flesh. As our souls reenter our new bodies, a massive sound will erupt around us: "On that day heaven will pass away with a roaring sound. Everything that makes up the universe will burn and be destroyed. The earth and everything that people have done on it will be exposed." (2 Peter 3:10) Jesus called this "the re-creation of the world." (Matt. 19:28) God will purge every square inch that sin has contaminated, polluted, degraded or defiled. But we may not even notice the reconstruction, for an even greater sight will appear before us: "the Son of Man coming on the clouds in the sky with power and great glory." (Matthew 24:30) Note the preposition on. Subtle distinction. Great declaration. Every person, saint and sinner alike, will see Jesus. "All the nations will be gathered before him." (Matt. 25:32)

By this point we will have seen a lot: the flurry of angels, the ascension of the bodies, the great gathering of the nations. We will have heard a lot, too: the shout of God and the angel, the trumpet blast, and the purging explosion. But every sight and sound will seem a remote memory compared to what will happen next: "He will be King and sit on his great throne." (Matthew 25:31) This is the direction in which all of history is focused. This is the moment toward which God's plot is moving. The details, characters, antagonists, heroes and subplots all arc in this direction. We’re carried toward a coronation for which all creation groans: “For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels – everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. . . . He was supreme in the beginning and – leading the resurrection parade – he is supreme in the end.” (Col. 1:16, 18)

God's creation will return to its beginning: a one-king kingdom. Our earth is plagued by multiple competing monarchs, each one of us climbing ladders and claiming thrones. But we will gladly remove our crowns when Christ comes back for us. During one of the crusades, Philippe Auguste, king of France, gathered his noble knights and men to call them to be strong in battle. He placed his crown on a table with the inscription "To the most worthy." He pledged the crown as the prize to be given to the bravest fighter. They went to battle and returned victorious and encircled the table on which the crown had been placed. One of the nobles stepped forward, took the crown, and put it on the head of the king, saying, "Thou, O King, art the most worthy."

On the great Day you'll hear billions of voices make the identical claim about Jesus Christ. "Every knee will bow to the name of Jesus – everyone in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. And everyone will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." (Phil. 2:10-11) Multitudes of people will bow low like a field of windblown wheat, each one saying, "Thou, O King, art the most worthy." There will be one monumental difference, however. Some people will continue the confession they began on earth. They will crown Christ again. Gladly. Others will crown him for the first time, but they will do so sadly. They denied Christ on earth, so he will deny them in heaven. But the saved will live with God forever. "I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: 'Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They're his people, he's their God.'" (Rev. 21:3) The narrator makes the same point four times in four consecutive phrases. The announcement comes with the energy of a six-year-old declaring the arrival of his dad now home from a long trip. "Dad's home! He's here! Mom, he's back!" One statement won't suffice. This is big news, worthy of repetition. We shall finally see God face-to-face. "They will see his face." (Rev. 22:4) Now let that sink in. You will see the face of God.

You will look into the eyes of the One who has always seen; you will behold the mouth that commands history. And if there is anything more amazing than the moment you see his face, it's the moment he touches yours. "He will wipe every tear from their eyes." (Rev. 21:4) God will touch your tears. Not flex his muscles or show off his power. Lesser kings would strut their stallions or give a victory speech. Not God. He prefers to rub a thumb across your cheek as if to say, "There, there . . . no more tears." Isn't that what a father does?

There was a lot I didn’t understand about my dad’s time away. The responsibilities of his job, his daily activities, the reason he needed to go. I was too young to comprehend all the details. But I knew this much: he would come home. For the same reason, who can understand what God is doing? These days on earth can seem so difficult: marred by conflict, saddened by separation. We fight, pollute, discriminate and kill. Societies suffer from innumerable fiefdoms, and small would-be dynasties. “What is this world coming to?” we wonder. God's answer: A great Day. And he, the Author of it all, will close the book on this life and open the book to the next, and begin to read to us from his never-ending story.

Grace,

Randy

Do Good

 

Do Good

Do Good - Audio/Visual 

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Rom. 8:28)

Robben Island consists of three-square miles of windswept land off the southern tip of Africa. Over the centuries it has served as the home for a prison, a leper colony, a mental institution and a naval station. Most significantly, it was the home of one of the most famous political prisoners in history, Nelson Mandela. He opposed South African apartheid – a system designed to extend the rule and privilege of the white minority by excluding Black people from "whites only" buses, "whites only" beaches, and "whites only" hospitals, just to name a few of the “whites only” restrictions. Black people couldn’t even run for office or live in white neighborhoods. Apartheid legalized racism. And Mandela was the perfect man to challenge it.

As a descendant of royalty, he was educated in the finest schools. As the son of a Christian mother, he embraced her love of God and for people. Under the tutelage of a tribal chief, he learned the art of compromise and consensus. And as a young Black lawyer in Cape Town, he experienced a thousand slights and indignities which produced an inward fire to fight the system that imprisoned his people. Mandela was a force with which to be reckoned. He was passionate, bitter, given to retaliation. With his enviable pedigree and impressive stature (6’2,” 245 lbs.) he was, for many, the hope of the South African Black culture. But then came August 5, 1962. Government officials arrested Mandela, convicted him of treason and sent him to prison. And for the next twenty-seven years, he stared through wired windows. Surely, he wondered how a season in prison could play a part in God's plan.

Maybe you've asked similar questions – maybe not about time in prison, but about your time in a dead-end job, or living in a puny town or a feeble body. Certain elements of life make sense. But what about autism, Alzheimer's or Mandela's prison sentence? Was Paul including those conditions when he wrote Romans 8:28? “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” And we know…. Do we? Really? There are a million things we don’t know. We don’t know if the economy will improve, or if our team will win. We don’t know what our spouse is thinking, or how our kids will turn out. We don't even know "what we ought to pray for." (Romans 8:26) But according to Paul, we can be absolutely certain that God works in all things.

Panta is the Greek word for “all,” as in "panoramic" or "panacea" or "pandemic." It means all-inclusive. God works, not through a few things, or through the good things, best things or even the easy things, but in "all things." Your life is a crafted narrative written by a good God who is working toward your supreme good. God is neither slipshod nor haphazard. He planned creation according to a calendar. And the death of Jesus was not an afterthought, nor was it Plan B or some sort of an emergency solution. Jesus died "when the set time had fully come" (Galatians 4:4) according to God's "deliberate plan and foreknowledge." (Acts 2:23) In other words, God isn't making up a plan as he goes along. Nor did he simply wind up the clock and walk away. "The LORD will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intentions of his mind." (Jeremiah 30:24) "In him we were also chosen . . . according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will." (Ephesians 1:11) “Everything” changes everything. And the Apostle Paul's life proves the words he wrote.

Paul grew up in Tarsus. He called it "an important city." (Acts 21:39) He wasn't exaggerating. Tarsus sat only a few miles from the coast and served as a hub for sailors, pirates and merchants from all over Europe and Asia. Any child raised in Tarsus would have heard a dozen languages and witnessed a tapestry of cultures. Tarsus was also a depot city on the Roman highway system. The empire boasted a network of roads that connected business centers of the ancient world – Ephesus; Iconium; Derbe; Antioch; and Caesarea. While young Paul likely didn't visit these cities, he grew up hearing about them.

Tarsus tattooed a Mediterranean map in his heart, and a keen intellect in his mind. Tarsus rivaled the academic seats of Alexandria and Athens. Paul probably conversed with students in the streets and, at the right age, became a student himself. He learned the language of his day: Greek. He mastered it. He spoke it. He wrote it. He thought it. Paul not only spoke the international language of the world, but he possessed the world’s passport. He was born a Jew and a Roman citizen. So, whenever he traveled throughout the empire, he was entitled to all the rights and privileges of a Roman citizen. He could enter any port, and was treated, not as a slave or foreigner, but as a freeman.

Young Paul left Tarsus with everything an itinerant missionary would need: cultural familiarity, linguistic skills, documents for travel, and a trade for earning a living – he was a tent maker. And that was only the beginning. Paul's parents sent him to Jerusalem for rabbinical studies. He memorized large sections of the Torah and digested massive amounts of rabbinical law. He was a valedictorian-level student, a Hebrew of Hebrews. He bragged about it. "I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers." (Galatians 1:14)

But before Paul was following God, God was leading Paul. He gave him an education, a vocation and all the necessary documentation. He schooled Paul in the Law of Moses and the lingua franca of his day. Who then better to present Jesus as the fulfillment of the law than a scholar of the law? But Paul had a violent side, too. He tore husbands from their homes, and moms from their children. He declared jihad against the church and murdered its disciples. (Acts 22:4) Could God use this ugly chapter to advance his cause? That’s not hypothetical because we all have seasons that are hard to explain.

Before we knew God's story, we made a mess of our own. Even afterward, we're prone to demand our own way, cut our own path and hurt people in the process. So, can God make good out of our bad? He did with Paul. "Now it happened, as I journeyed and came near Damascus at about noon, suddenly a great light from heaven shone around me. And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me . . ." (Acts 22:6) Saying what? Saying something like "I'm going to give you a taste of your own medicine"? Or "Back to the dust with you, you Christian killer"? Or "Prepare to meet your Maker"? Did Paul expect to hear words like these? If so, he didn't. Even before he requested mercy, he was offered mercy. Jesus told him: “I have appeared to you to appoint you as my servant and witness.” (Acts 26:16)

Jesus transformed Paul, the card-carrying legalist, into a champion of mercy. Who would have thought? Yet who would be better qualified? Paul could write epistles of grace by dipping his pen into the inkwell of his own experiences. He’d learned Greek in the schools of Tarsus, tent making in the home of his father, and the Torah at the feet of Gamaliel. And he learned about love when Jesus paid him a personal visit on the Damascus Highway. “All things” worked together; all of his life’s experiences.

It’s a picture of God's work in us. All the transfers, layoffs, breakdowns, breakups and bankruptcies. Difficulties. Opportunities. All of them – sifted and stirred and popped into the oven. Heaven knows, we've felt the heat in the kitchen and wondered if God's choice of ingredients will result in anything worth serving. And If Nelson Mandela had those same concerns, no one could blame him.

His prison life was harsh. He was confined to a six-by-six-foot concrete room for his 6’2”, 245 lb. frame. It had one small window that overlooked the courtyard. He had a desk, a mattress, a chair, three blankets and a rusted-iron sanitary bucket with a 10” concave porcelain top for washing and shaving. Meals came from corn: breakfast was a porridge of corn scraped from the cob; lunch and supper consisted of corn on the cob; coffee was roasted corn mixed with water. Mandela and the other prisoners were awakened at 5:30 a.m. They crushed rocks into gravel until noon, ate lunch and then worked until 4:00 p.m. Back in the cell at 5:00, asleep by 8:00. And discrimination continued even in prison. Africans, like Mandela, were required to wear short pants while crushing sharp rocks and were denied bread. Yet God used it all to shape Nelson Mandela.

The prisoner read widely: Leo Tolstoy and John Steinbeck. He exercised daily: a hundred fingertip push-ups, two hundred sit-ups and fifty deep knee bends. Most of all he honed the capacity to compromise and forgive. He developed courtesy in all situations, disarming even the guards who had been intentionally placed by his cell to cause him trouble. He became particularly close to one jailer who, over two decades, read the Bible and discussed Scripture with Mandela. "All men,” Mandela reflected later, “have a core of decency, and . . . if their heart is touched, they are capable of changing." After twenty-seven years of confinement, and at the age of seventy-two, Mandela was released. Those who knew him well described the pre-prison Mandela as "cocky and pugnacious." But the refined Mandela? "I came out mature," he said. He was devoted to "rationality, logic and compromise." Journalists noted his lack of bitterness. And within four years Mandela was elected president and set out to lead South Africa out of apartheid and into a new era of equality.

God needed an educated, sophisticated leader who'd mastered the art of patience and compromise, so he tempered Mandela in prison. He needed a culture-crossing, Greek-speaking, border-passing, Torah-quoting, self-supporting missionary, so he gave grace to Paul, and Paul shared grace with the world. And what about you? In a moment before moments, your Maker looked into the future and foresaw the needs and demands of your generation. He instilled and is instilling within you everything you need to fulfill his plan in this era. "God made us to do good works, which God planned in advance for us to live our lives doing." (Ephesians 2:10)

So, do good and see if, in all things, it’s actually a good God working in you, and through you for all of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

Grace,

Randy