Responding to God's call...slowly

God's grace is so great that He can allow us to be ourselves- in fact, He made us all different so maybe He actually delights that we respond to Him in different ways! Some of us find it easy to obey Him, while others struggle. Some of us are in a season of walking closely with Him, listening out for His voice and experiencing real joy from obedience- and others feel dry, far away from God and full of doubt and questions.
Paul was certainly far from walking in God's ways- even though he thought he was acting with obedience. A clue to the fact that his obedience was misplaced was in the fact that it did not bring him joy or peace. He describes his behaviour in Acts 26 like this:

Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. I was so obsessed with persecuting them that I even hunted them down in foreign cities.
                                                          (Acts 26: 11)

 This is a description of a driven man, obsessed by hurting others to reinforce his own sense of righteousness.
Yet even he was not beyond the call of God- and even he was able to listen and respond.

If the example of Mary's simple trust seems beyond you today, look instead at Paul- a proud, arrogant, abusive man who seemed beyond redemption, and yet could say

For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do- this I keep on doing.
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?
Thanks be to God, who delivers me through our Lord Jesus Christ!

                                                              (Romans 7: 18,19,24, 25)

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