Tricia Goyer shares her three-part series “Just be Available.” If you have not read part one, make sure you do so HERE. Today Tricia shares the challenge to answer the call.
Just Be Available-
4 Truths That Make You Willing to Answer the Call.
Do you have trust issues? I do.
I mean who hasn’t been hurt? Abandoned? Left behind. There are those who say they love us, but then turn their backs on us.
And then there is God. He wants us to follow Him, to answer the call and be available to Him … but it’s not as if He speaks to us in a clear, audible voice, right? He wants us to trust Him, but we have so many questions and concerns.
When it comes to being available to follow God, how can we be sure that we’re not going to mess everything up?
How do we take steps forward when everything within us yells for us to stay in our “safe” zone?
After John and I moved to Montana in 1995, I really started seeking God. Once you get out of your comfort zone and see God work, it gets easier to open one’s heart to more that He’s going to do.
But when it came to asking more from me, God didn’t start with a list of demands. Instead, He started speaking to me about who He was–and showing me who I was in His eyes.
I thought I could hide from Jesus.
I thought that I could hide from Jesus, well, not really …
I’d been a pretty good person all my life, but there is one sin that reminded me I wasn’t just bad, I was horrible. When I was 15-years-old I found out I was pregnant. Scared, ashamed, and overwhelmed, I chose to have an abortion. And I’d carried that burden like a chain around my neck for ten years.
I stayed away from God, in my heart, because I felt unclean in His sight. Yes, I’d asked Him to forgive me. Yes, I gave my life to Him, but still, I felt that I’d done too much for Him to really love me. Because of Jesus, I knew God was giving me heaven, but I felt far from deserving it.
The truth that set me free and made me able to answer the call.
The breakthrough came when I started attending a Bible Study for women who’d had abortions. It was through that study I realized that no matter what I’d done in the past, God saw me as forgiven.
God saw me as a beautiful child. God had good plans for me. Plans to give me a hope and a future.
Through personal Bible study, God pointed out the flawed people that He used for His glory. For example, King David was a nobody before God made Him a somebody.
And even when David was a somebody, He committed sins that would make anybody cringe: adultery and murder just to name two. Yet God called David, “The apple of His eye” and “A man after His own heart.” Why? Because King David made himself available to God—to fight God’s enemies and lead God’s people, he was obedient to answer the call. To worship God no matter what anyone else thought.
Even at the end of his life, David gave God glory for every good thing that had happened to him.
In 2 Samuel 23:5, we read, “It is my family God has chosen! Yes, he has made an everlasting covenant with me. His agreement is eternal, final, sealed. He will constantly look after my safety and success.”
As I read that statement, I realized God’s promises weren’t just for David, but also for me!
Will you accept what God’s done for you?
Will you trust how God sees His agreement with you? You are His child: eternal, final, and sealed.
God just doesn’t want to put up with you. He wants to constantly look after your safety and success.
Sure, solid, enduring love.
But these plans aren’t for David alone. In Isaiah 55:3, The Message Translation, we read:
“Pay attention, come close now, listen carefully to my life-giving, life-nourishing words. I’m making a lasting covenant commitment with you, the same that I made with David: sure, solid, enduring love.”
We are only available to God when we trust Him completely. When we trust in His sure, solid, and enduring love.
We need to know that whatever He asks us to do, He has us covered. We must answer the call.
2 Corinthians 12:9 reads: “My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.”
When we’re available to God, He helps us in our weakness.
And in order to trust Him, God wants us to believe 4 truths about who He is. These are 4 truths about HIM that will help you answer the call. He is:
1. A BIG God with BIG dreams for you.
2. A God who has made an agreement with you that is eternal, final, and sealed.
3. A God who will constantly look after your safety and success.
4. A God who will be strong in your weaknesses.
Can you trust Him like that? Can you answer the call?
Can you trust that whatever God asks you to do is the natural outflow from his sure, solid, and enduring love?
Prayer
God, give me the strength to let go and trust you fully. I want to understand fully that your grace is all I need and that your strength comes into its own in my weakness. I want to pay attention and listen to your life-giving, life-nourishing words.
