There Is More In YouSample

 Day 6: Find You!

I was sitting at dinner with Stedman Graham Jr., American educator, author, and businessman, and he said, “It takes a long time for a man to know who he is.” I have found that to be true. You think you know, but when life happens, it brings things out of you that you were not aware existed. Circumstances change, and you experience a season where you find out things about yourself you didn’t know at all. Losses and failures; sickness and disappointment – all reshape and rearrange your narrative of how you see yourself. This is not gender specific; everyone is evolving, becoming; you are not finished yet. It takes a lifetime to really know yourself. That is the scary thing about life and relationships…God is not finished with any of us.

It is not by accident that Jesus did not call the religious to be disciples. He knew he would have too much trouble extracting entrenched religious ideas out of church people. He wanted a clean canvas he could paint on. He wanted people who would infiltrate different streams of consciousness, who had influence in different areas and cultures, bilingual enough to speak the languages of the world, not the languages of the church. Although Jesus knew that the synagogues would reject him, to fulfill scripture he had to go to them first. Through a process of elimination, he knew he would birth the church from the remnant, not the garment. Consistent with the nature of God, the church would be built on who was left. God always uses what is left. Consequently, Jesus chooses disciples that were not religious; they knew nothing about church. 

When Jesus first met Peter, he was on his boat. Peter was a fisherman by profession. When Jesus asked Peter to use his boat, Peter’s business became God’s platform. Peter did not know Jesus. Peter had to have a certain amount of faith and some sense that this was a destiny moment to let Jesus use his boat. Look at the correlation between business and faith; the man of faith comes to the business man and turns it into a platform. Jesus changed the trajectory of Peter’s life from being a fisher of fish to becoming a fisher of men.