I have wanted to return to Anhui for a second time; however, it wasn't a no-brainer to decide to join the Anhui team in 2008. Due to the Olympic Games in Beijing this year, we needed to make the decision by the end of March in order to keep the cost down. An encounter with a friend (and now a teammate) at a bakery near church one Sunday gave me a kick to submit my application form.
He said, "why don't you go ahead and submit your application form? If God doesn't want you to go, he'll close the door." It's not the first time I hear similar reasoning. Yet, at that time, it got to me because I knew two persons who wanted to do short-term mission works in two separate locations but their plan didn't materialize. So the idea that God closes doors wasn't a mere concept.
After I turned in my application form to join the Friends of Anhui, the next step was to draft a support letter. One friend who received my letter wrote back, "I envy you...God has chosen you for a second time [to go to Anhui]. I wish I had the chance." The short note got me thinking, "God has chosen me? I thought I was the one who made the choice to go."
Indeed, who made the decision? God or I?
3 comments:
I think God grant us the privilage of serving him, but the final decision is from oneself. God can decide whom to serve.
In Christ,
Wai
Like asking if it's the Holy Spirit moved us to conversion or we used our will power to make this decision to belief.
I think put you and I as human seeing no work undertook by something invisible, we did used our will power to accomplish things. Lift our thinking from the human level to the divine level (imagine we're with God looking down from heaven), we could see actually it was the Holy Spirit working on us, beyond our knowledge.
So is there really any contradiction?
You're right. There's no contradiction at all.
In fact, one not only is saved by grace, one goes through life & the journey of sanctification by grace. It's also by grace that one wills to serve zealously with a talent (that's God-given in the first place) and to love the Lord whole-heartedly.
There's no ground to be boastful of anything.
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