Send Me Series

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

› Engagement

Much of the time when we pray, our prayer is pretty self-centered. We tend to pray when we want something from God, either something for ourselves, or, if we’re really spiritual, we’ll ask God to give something to a loved one or friend or fellow Christian. So most of our prayers are for things like health, or financial needs, or a job situation, or for safe travel. We even make our own plans and then ask God to bless them. There is certainly nothing wrong with most of those prayers and we should keep on praying for those things.

But, as I hope you’ve seen in this series, Dangerous Prayers, there is a deeper level of prayer that focuses on offering our lives up to God and asking Him to use us for His purposes, plans, and ways. So far, we’ve looked at two prayers:

• Search me. That’s a dangerous prayer because we are opening up our lives to God’s scrutiny and asking Him to reveal our blind spots and our hidden sins. And that is dangerous because once God reveals those things, we have an obligation to make some changes, sometimes some radical changes, in our lives in order to address the things we have now become aware of.

• Break me. This is undoubtedly the hardest of these prayers to pray and the one that most of us are reluctant to pray. When we pray that prayer we’re telling God that we are willing to be totally sold out to serve Him regardless of the cost. And there aren’t a lot of Christians who are willing to do that.

› Tension

The final prayer that we’ll look at in this series is “Send me”. We’ll be developing that idea by looking at Isaiah’s call in Isaiah chapter 6, so go ahead and turn in your Bibles to that chapter.

Before we read part of that chapter, I want to talk about three possible responses that we can make to God’s call on our lives. And in order to do that, I need to explain what I mean by God’s “call”. It is one of those theological words that we tend to throw around without always understanding what we mean by it. Let’s begin with a definition:

“call” =

God’s initiative to bring people to Jesus and to participate in His redemptive work in the world.

In that definition, we can see that there is both what we could label a “general call”, as well as what I’ll term a “specific call”. The general call is the universal call that God issues for people to enter into a relationship with Him through faith in Jesus. That call is probably best expressed by this familiar verse:

John 3:16 ESV

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Whoever is willing to believe in Jesus and put their faith in Him receives eternal life. And praise God, most of you joining us today have responded positively to that call. And that call is a prerequisite to every “specific call”.

By a specific call I am referring to the specific plan that God has for each individual. Each person could have a number of those calls in his or her life and those calls are going to be different for each of us. And although what I’m going to share today also applies to some degree when it comes to that general call to follow Jesus, I’m going to primarily speaking about these specific calls on our lives.

THREE POSSIBLE RESPONSES TO GOD’S CALL:

I haven’t really mentioned it so far, but I am indebted to Pastor Craig Groeschel from Life Church for the idea for this sermon series. So far in this series, while I have watched and/or read his messages, my sermons have taken a direction that has been quite different from his. But this morning, some of the principles I’m going to share are derived directly from his sermon so I want to make sure to give him proper credit. And that is true when it comes to these three possible responses to God’s call on our lives.

• Here I am; I’m not going

This was Jonah’s response to God. God called him to go and preach to the people of Nineveh, but initially Jonah ran from God and from that call. Jonah only reluctantly agreed to do what God had called him to do after being swallowed by a large fish and spending three days in its belly.