A good friend of mine handed me a book asking if I had read it before. I hadn’t. But as I’ve made my way through it the past few weeks, I’ve been challenged, encouraged, and deeply blessed by the life of Paul Hattaway as recorded in An Asian Harvest (which is April’s book giveaway).
At the start of chapter 14, Hattaway quotes Oswald Chambers (another of my favorites) who wrote: “If you give God the right to yourself, He will make a holy experiment out of you. God’s experiments always succeed.”
What a great statement!
Two other statements from this chapter have caused a lot of musing as of late. Paul Hattaway writes …
I once heard about a businessman who bought a brand new sports car for his son’s seventeenth birthday. The excited teenager grabbed the keys and took off down the highway in his powerful new toy. Fifteen minutes later he crashed into a concrete barrier and died.
The Lord Jesus doesn’t entrust the keys to His kingdom in such an irresponsible manner. He spends time building godly character into the lives of His children, often through struggles and hardship, to ensure that they are mature enough to handle the tasks He wants them to perform.
Later in the chapter, Hattaway mentions a statement a godly older man once told him that he has thought about many times since, “never forget one thing: the greatest ability you will ever have is your availability.”
I once heard a similar thing: “God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.”
Wherever you find yourself, whether it is in the “building godly character” season where you face struggles and hardships, or whether you delight every day in the provision and richness of our Lord, remember that what God wants of you is not your talent, success, or gifts … but your surrender, obsession, and availability.
Know I am cheering you on unto that end!
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