August 5th — THE BAFFLING CALL OF GOD
August 5th.THE BAFFLING CALL OF GOD
"And all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished . . . And they understood none of these things."
Luke 18:31, 34
God cal ed Jesus Christ to what seemed unmitigated disaster. Jesus Christ cal ed His disciples to see Him put to death; He led every one of them to the place where their hearts were broken. Jesus Christ's life was an absolute failure from every standpoint but God's. But what seemed failure from man's standpoint was a tremendous triumph from God's, because God's purpose is never man's purpose.
There comes the baffling cal of God in our lives also. The cal of God can never be stated explicitly; it is implicit. The cal of God is like the cal of the sea, no one hears it but the one who has the nature of the sea in him. It cannot be stated definitely what the cal of God is to, because His cal is to be in comradeship with Himself for His own purposes, and the test is to believe that God knows what He is after. The things that happen do not happen by chance, they happen entirely in the decree of God. God is working out His purposes.
If we are in communion with God and recognize that He is taking us into His purposes, we shal no longer try to find out what His purposes are. As we go on in the Christian life it gets simpler, because we are less inclined to say - Now why did God al ow this and that? Behind the whole thing lies the compel ing of God. "There's a divinity that shapes our ends." A Christian is one who trusts the wits and the wisdom of God, and not his own wits. If we have a purpose of our own, it destroys the simplicity and the leisureliness which ought to characterize the children of God.