“Lord, are you sure you want me to go? Am I a right choice? I still have so many areas of my life that I need to surrender to you…”
Since our decision to go overseas to serve the Lord next year, we have been faced with different challenges personally and on the home front. These challenges have revealed to me my weaknesses and how I am still distracted by things of this world. I have been asking myself the above questions and have wondered if I am ready to go overseas to be Christ’s ambassador with all these issues that I still need to work through.
Just recently, I was asking myself these questions and was feeling quite discouraged. About an hour later, I was doing my devotion using our church’s 60th Anniversary devotional booklet, and when I read John 15, Jesus’ words in verse 16 struck me.
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give it to you.” John 15:16 (ESV)
Even though this is a familiar passage, these words really spoke to my heart when I read these words, “I CHOSE YOU”. I felt the Lord addressing my doubts and affirming me that despite how I feel, He is the one who has chosen me and He chose me knowing my flaws and weaknesses. Even before I acknowledged these weaknesses, He already knew them as He is the one who has created my inmost being and had knitted me together in my mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13). Yet despite these weaknesses, His assurance is that
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9a)
This assurance and affirmation really touched me as it was an almost immediate assurance from my Heavenly Father when He knew I was feeling discouraged. In those three simple words “I chose you”, I also felt His unconditional love and faith in me that He knows I am not perfect, yet He has chosen me to be His child and also His instrument to bring others to Him.
Do we sometimes feel the same way, that we have too many flaws for God to use for His glory? Do we feel that unless we have settled these issues, we can never be used by Him? I pray that these words will bring the same assurance to you as they had brought me. Our Father is telling each of us that He has chosen us. He knows us inside out and can still use us as His workmanship with all our failures and flaws to bear fruits for Him. All we need to do is to be willing to be used by Him, to submit ourselves fully to Him and allow Him to mould us and refine us.
May we be like Paul who concluded 2 Corinthians 12:9 with these words, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” May we glorify God as we allow Him to work through our weaknesses and rest in His deep assurance of love that He has chosen us.
By Sarah Choo (YCKC Bulletin 29&30 November 2014)