Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you. (Jonah 3:2)
Sometimes I feel God impressing me to pray for a certain patient or to make sure they have put their faith in Jesus. This is hard when I have tried to talk to that person about Jesus before, and they made it clear they did not want to talk. Yet I have been surprised when people who seemed bent on resisting the Lord have welcomed an offer of prayer. In those moments, I remember that, even though God’s heart yearns to reach out one more time, he usually chooses to work through people. For many of us, the beginning of God’s call on our lives consisted in his instructions to another believer to witness to us.
In the same way, God’s call to Nineveh had to start with a call to someone who knew him. It was his grace to Nineveh that got an Israelite prophet involved, going out of his way to reach a pagan nation. Through his obedience, the preacher then extended the call to them. God initiated the whole interaction. God wants to orchestrate interactions for us as well. His grace desires to save every person around us, but some of them will never know of his grace unless we tell them. To whom is God calling us? When we obey, we become a source of his grace to another person.
Look for opportunities to share God’s call of salvation with others.
Debbie Shaw is a graduate of Indiana Wesleyan University and resides in North Carolina with her husband, Lee. She enjoys gardening, painting, reading, and coffee.
© 2023 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
