Prepare the way

Normally by this time in the quarter, I know exactly what I am to do regarding ministry regarding those people I am to focus on etc. This year before I began this quarter I sat down and tried to plan out all that I felt God calling me to and I came up empty for the first time in two years. God told me something to the effect of "the gospel is mysterious and messy." "The splatter paint and the throwing of neatly stacked papers to the sky to fall back in one giant mess is to be this quarter." A few weeks in now somehow I find it is strangely beautiful. This quarter is not to be the same in any way at all. For those who know about pattern languages this is one I don't think we would have ever come up with on our own. This is surely God in our midst. Something I know many have prayed for and I pray now we are ready for

I sat down with one of the pastors of the church I go to here in SLO on Thursday morning. I tried in vain to tell him all that God is doing in and around me in this place and on the larger scale of this age. I found myself perfectly inadequate to tell of it all...my God... bigger than my words will ever be.

That seems to be the theme...a strong desire to recount it all but a calling to simply let it be chaotic and changing.

Currently God has me going through all of the gospels: Matthew in bible study, Mark at crusade, Luke in my quiet times, and John at Calvary SLO. It is one big thing that I can't recount going through all four of them: seeing how all four are doing such an effective job recounting God among men. God was huge to those four men.

There was something I came across for the first time really yesterday that struck me about these four writers and one man in particular that they mention: John the Baptist.

I was reading through the gospel according to Luke last night and came across this:

He began to speak to the crowds about John (referring to John the Baptist), "What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?...a prophet? Yes! This is the one for whom it is written "I send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way before you.” I say to you among those born of women there is no one greater than John...

-Luke 7:24-27

I will not do all the cross references across the other writers here because it is an unending trail of how important this man of God was...one who would prepare the way for Jesus.

This got me thinking something that I had been dwelling on for a majority of these past two or three weeks as God called me to not lead a bible study this quarter and to really not do anything that most of us would classify as saying yes to ministry.

Here's the question God has been asking me for a while: What if God much like he did with John or in Nehemiah's life used my life to prepare the way for the lord: to facilitate the gospel coming to fullest light in this world?

I get this picture as Jesus is writing to John in prision that he is smiling and delighting in the fact that there was no one greater than John, born of woman. Someone willing to lay waste to the mountains that the path may be clear. Someone willing to exalt the valley!

I get this picture as Jesus is going into Jerusalem riding on a donkey and palm branches are being thrown before him that he has to stop and smile at the fact those walls were built around the city. The fact that Nehemiah a man of ordinary profession and long obedience was able to prepare the way for the facilitation of the Jews to return to Jerusalem and God to come among men.

Couldn't God do something extraordinary again with a man of obedience and ordinary means? I dare to believe so.

Prepare the way!

JG