The Question is: Whom Shall I Send? – 14 July 2022

“Here am I. Send me!”

Have you ever stopped to think about how God called key people in the Bible to serve Him? I have, and I observed that it was never too difficult for Him to, each time, present a remarkably different way of reaching out to an individual he’d identified for a mission. At the right time, He would reveal Himself in a marvellous way and show His exclusive knowledge of their heart and ability as He engaged with them, creating for each one a unique experience.

Clearly, for Isaiah it was this magnificent vision of God, in all His majesty, which overwhelmed and stirred him; (Isaiah 6:1-8) but, indeed, his confidence had also increased after hearing the seraph’s words, “your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for” after touching his lips with a live coal from the altar. He responded to God immediately.

For the Apostle Paul, a flash of blinding light, then loss of sight was his experience of Jesus calling him in more intense circumstances: “He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’” (Acts 9:4) When he got up again he was blind and stayed like that for three days “and did not eat or drink anything”. (Acts 9:8-9)

What each person came to realise was that God’s mission was not about them and their inability, but about God’s powerful capability and what He would do through them, through His Spirit with them, equipping and empowering them.

If you had been given the choice to be one of the people He’d called, which scenario would you have chosen to be in for an utterly amazing encounter?

Personally, I loved God’s calling of Moses from the mystery of the burning bush; and Samuel, who, with a child’s wonder, awoke in the night to hear God’s voice calling his name. But, perhaps what has best captured my imagination, and I can most identify with, is God’s gentle, yet unwavering sense of purpose in His words to Jeremiah: “’Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations’’” (Jeremiah 1:5)

God is still calling people to His mission today; still appearing to them in ways that arrest their attention, sometimes through dramatic events, sometimes through literature, or an appeal, often it is through the “gentle whisper” (1 Kings 19:12) speaking in their hearts, as he did with Elijah.

When God calls us, He will guide and equip us as He did His people throughout the Bible. Would we respond unquestioningly and willingly, like Isaiah, and say, “Hear am I. Send me!”?

What is God calling you to do for Him today?

Prayer: Gracious Lord, make me sensitive to Your Spirit’s leading; may my heart always be willing to respond to Your call. Amen