We have it all backwards

Sometimes we get it right and sometimes we do things backwards and have very poor results. I've noticed throughout the years a subtle strangeness about the methodology we use to identify particular roles that each of us play in varying aspects of our life. The strangeness often occurs when we super impose roles on people . I remember a Little league baseball coach that tried to make me a pitcher. I wasn't a very good pitcher but he wanted to make me a pitcher and so I pitched. The team lost all the time when I pitched. Even as a child I thought that it was dumb to make me a pitcher and I was very discouraged. Now if the coach would have watched me catch ground balls he would have seen that I was a much better infielder. We had other guys that could pitch.

That is a small illustration that when played out in the adult world can be disastrous. God made us what we are. We just need to live out our lives with the talents that he imparted to each of us. Do you think that Paul was born an Apostle? I don't think so because if you study the scriptures you will read that Paul was an enemy of God until the Lord knocked him on his can for persecuting Christians. After that incident Paul was on fire for Christ and spent the rest of his life spreading the good news of the gospel. Paul's identity was later chronicled to be that of an Apostle. The office and ministry of Paul's work was called Apostolic. Paul didn't call it anything. He didn't need a title. He was a man on a mission.

When we read the life of Paul we often mis-intertpret what really happened because we are in such a hurry to put a title on his work so that we can make our own futile attempts to duplicate the process. What we fail to see is the very obvious. Paul did nothing to deserve his calling or the title that we give him as the greatest Apostle. It was what God did to Paul that made him serve in such a mighty way. God blinded him for three days and had his eyes opened in miraculous fashion by Ananias.

Acts 9:17

Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit." Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

So the Lord knocks Paul on his can, blinds him for three days, and then heals him and we think Paul is great. The works of Paul were great because the Lord needed a great work done and so the Lord orchestrated a powerful conversion to one of His enemies. I use Paul as an example because this is how the church often gets things backwards. We get enamoured with Paul and try to cookie cutter a bunch more like him. We can't do that. That's God's part! We have it all backwards.