Get In The Word – Know Your Script

At Sojourn, we are all about you getting in the Word - it’s God’s message for you, as you are, where you are. Right now we’re working through the Old Testament as a church body and it’s a big undertaking that can seem pretty intimidating. But we want to assure you that nobody has to be a scholar to understand the Bible. God didn’t just speak to the brainiacs - he spoke to all of us. Still, a little help along the way is good. That’s why Sojourn has a daily Bible reading plan and devotional which can be found online here.

The readings for the beginning of Ezekiel start here.

We urge you to jump into God’s word with us. We’ll be in Ezekiel again next week and we encourage you to read along. Here are a few thoughts and encouragements related to today’s sermon.

This Sunday’s sermon focused on the prophet Ezekiel’s call and commission as a messenger of God. One notable fact is that Ezekiel had spent his life training for ministry in the Temple, yet when his 30th birthday rolled around (the birthday when priests-in-training officially would become priests in the Temple), he found himself exiled with thousands of other Iraelites and knowing that the Temple was destroyed. The script that he had been following all his life seemed to be torn up and scattered at his feet and he was truly in a place utterly alien to him. His script must have seemed frustratingly destroyed.

We often fall into this same line of thinking. We have big plans, we have big ideas. They might even be big ideas for doing God’s mission of reaching people with the message of Jesus. We are very aware of our script and we are painfully unaware of the glory of God. And we can find ourselves bowing down to our script, our big ideas for career, family, even ministry. And boy do we get frustrated and discouraged when it seems we’re not living out our script. I would challenge you with this – if you’re not living out what you think is your script, then it’s obviously not your script. At least not now.

There’s a real danger of bowing down to some imaginary future with some imaginary group of people we’re going to reach for Jesus; and being so caught up in that future that we fail to see the opportunity to be on mission right now, as we are, where we are. Every moment you are exactly where God has sent you. You may have a desire to be somewhere else, and that desire could even be godly, but if you’re not there, then you are missing the present reality of God’s mission for you now.

God’s mission for you is an adventure that starts with you seeing God right in the middle of where you are and being faithful to God’s call right in the middle of where you are. Ezekiel found this out. His not serving in the Temple, where he always thought he’d be, didn’t hinder God from sending him on a vital, present-tense mission. You not being where you always thought you’d be won’t stop God from sending you on a vital, present-tense mission, either.

Proverbs 19:21 says, ‘Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.’ It was true for Ezekiel, it’s true for you.

To listen to this Sunday’s sermon and past sermons in the B.C. series, click here and visit Sojourn’s online resources page.