NOTE FROM PASTOR JR FOR SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2019

As I prepared to speak at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa Thursday, I noticed a professor was trying to get the attention of a student on the other side of the auditorium. The student asked, “Who, Me?” and the professor responded “Yes. You.” Most of us have had this experience. Our initial response to a call came from the uncertainty that the call was for us.

As a pastor, I have watched this occur many times spiritually in people’s lives. We hear God’s call to hope, forgiveness and love… even a call to service and our initial response comes from our uncertainty that call is meant for us. So, we ask “Who, Me?” And God answers “Yes. You.”

In Jeremiah 1, God calls out to Jeremiah and his initial response is “Who, Me?” and God says “Yes. You.” Like us, Jeremiah’s “Who, Me?” moment comes from a failure to trust that God’s call to us comes because God knew us before we were born and is the results of God’s unconditional love.

The Apostle Paul’s best-known writing about love in I Corinthians 13 should also be considered a description of God’s love for us. Read these words out loud to yourself: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing; but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. “(vs. 4-8)

Perhaps if we think of this as Gods love for us, we would be less like to initially respond to God’s call on our lives with “Who, Me?” And there would be no need for God to respond, “Yes, You!”

Join us for worship this Sunday at Covenant, where the sermon will be “I asked God, “ME?” God said, “YES. YOU.” The assigned scriptures are “Jeremiah 1:4-10 and I Corinthians 13:1-13.

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