| No One Ever Told Me My Life Could Be Different |
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What does God want to begin in you? Will this be the year to step confidently into His plan? I met Danny just a few weeks ago. At 22 years of age, he’s awaiting sentencing on charges of assault with a deadly weapon. His high school classmates told me Danny has been following his parent’s lifestyle of drug and alcohol abuse and asked if I would go to the jail and visit him. The young man I met wasn’t at all what I expected. Polite and congenial, he expressed a genuine interest in knowing God and how to please Him. That interest had led him to start reading the Bible. He had made it into 1 Kings, but confessed that he didn’t understand much of what he read. During my second visit with Danny, I shared with him the change that inviting Jesus into his heart and life could bring about. I can still hear his reply. “No one ever told me that my life could be different.” I wonder how many people are in a similar predicament. Not living a lifestyle of drug or alcohol abuse or awaiting a possible prison sentence, but that no one has ever told them their life could be different; that their circumstances were neither permanent nor life defining. Has the Holy Spirit been speaking to you about change? It may be a vocational change, relocating, finishing a degree, becoming a mentor, joining a discipleship group, volunteering to serve in a ministry, or accepting your singleness. Ask God for clarity to understand His will and direction for your life. Seek His guidance and then give yourself permission to believe Him and respond. What He calls you to do He will gift you to do. Shortly after entering the ministry, God gave me Philippians 1:6 as a life verse: “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.” From that verse I have taken courage to believe wherever God leads I can follow with confidence. In my life it has proven true. After 16 years in ministry, I returned to school to finish a master’s degree. God also led me to leave my native Canada, with all of its family connections, to minister in the US. That ministry has included so many unforeseen involvements. In one location, it was Single Adult Ministries to largely military personnel. Over the years, God has given the opportunity to share my home with many new believers in a type of live-in discipleship situation. And now, most recently, it has been a ministry to inmates around our state in what a retired missionary friend calls “The Church of God Incarcerated.” And what about Danny? We have a new brother in Christ! I just sent him the last two lessons in the Basic Bible Studies for New and Growing Christians. Each time we visit, there are verses he wants to share or has questions about. His hunger for spiritual truth seems to be insatiable. What about you? What new thing may God wish to begin in your life? What good work that He has begun in you would He like to carry on to completion? Pray for courage and boldness; them step confidently into what He wishes to carry you on to. Larry D. Spicer is an associate pastor in Missoula, Montana, and a Nazarene Fellowship (NFSA) council member. |