Stepping In

Today’s devotion is compliments of Leigh McLeroy (http://www.leighmcleroy.com/).

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Years ago I interviewed a retired pastor--a gifted evangelist with a good shepherd's heart. He recalled coming to his final pastorate as a much younger man, and exploring his new church from top to bottom. In the basement, he was shown an ornate old pulpit, and asked if he might like to put it back into service.
 
The storied pulpit, he said, wasn't just a modest ledge on which to prop open his bible--it was a serious piece of walk-in furniture! "I realized," he said, "that this pulpit--and the role it represented--wasn't something a preacher stepped up to--it was something he stepped in to."
 
The world might have viewed this still-wet-behind-the-ears pastor's ecclesiastic call as a challenge to "step up." But he rightly saw it as in invitation from Christ to "step in"--to enter and fully inhabit a role that required more--much more--than he humanly possessed.
 
Has God ever summoned you to a task or a season you were sure was bigger than your gifting--or your courage? To a space so formidable that you were awed by its vastness? Friends have told me they felt this weight the first time they held their infant child. I've felt it on the first day of a new job, in the dizzying seconds before opening my mouth to speak, and in the yawning emptiness of a blank white page, before one word is written on it. I may have even exhorted myself (or someone else) to "step up" in such circumstances as these.
 
I know better now. 
 
The only appropriate response to the call of God is to enter it. Fully. In faith. Unreservedly. Sidling up to His charge is not obedience. Hedging our bets is no way to honor His trust. Happy is the man or woman who can step wholeheartedly into the path God opens, no matter how daunting or uncertain.

No dallying. No teasing. No hiding. All in.
 
After all, that's what Jesus did--and He's the one we're called to imitate, in the best sense of the word.

- Leigh McLeroy

"When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, and became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death..." (Philippians 2:6-8, The Message)

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