Sunday Blogovotional: Serving In Spite of Ourselves

"I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.  Therfore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves."  Matthew 10:16

In Matthew chapter 10 we hear Jesus' instructions to the twelve apostles as he sends them out to preach the message that the Kingdom of Heaven is near.  He tells them to go and heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy and to drive out demons.  Sounds great if the passage stopped there.   

Jesus goes on to tell them they will encounter resistance.  They will be arrested, tried, flogged, jailed, etc. all for doing the will of the one who sent them.  What's amazing is that they didn't let the knowledge of these consequences stop them from their mission.  They either didn't believe these things would happen or they didn't think it would be that bad.  Nevertheless - they went - they served - they preached - they ministered.

We often want God to send us on a mission but would we be as faithful as the apostles?  Would we go forward with God's will if we knew the discomfort and inconvenience that awaited us?  Maybe this is why God doesn't tell us more about our life journey.  Maybe, just maybe, too much knowledge isn't a good thing.  Maybe we would run away from serving Him if we knew too much.

Encouragement for the week: God could give us a blueprint of our lives, tell us what our life purpose is and leave us to it.  But He doesn't.  There's a real possibility that left to our own navigating skills we would pick the easiest path and coincidentally the road paved with fewer serving opportunities. Instead, He navigates right along with us, protecting us from our own instinctive bad decisions.  He leads us in to service if we walk along with Him.