Chosen and Appointed
by Patricia Lake
“Everything he touches turns to gold” was the rumour going round the organisation I previously worked for in my younger days. We were waiting in great anticipation for the arrival of the new managing director. When he arrived, this softly spoken gentleman lived up to the rumours, for within a few short years he led his team and the company into a successful management buyout, thus becoming a millionaire overnight. However, one day he shared with us how, as a baby, he had been left on a doorstep, so he didn’t know his natural parentage and couldn’t tell doctors his previous family history. When found, he was taken to a very well known Christian Children’s Home in England where he was cared for and grew up.
I realised that I was watching today’s scripture in action in this man’s life, although he hadn’t yet come to a personal knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The fact is, the Lord loves, watches over and cares for every one of us. Children are the blessing of the Lord and God has given each one of us as gifts into our families, our generation and this world. However, even if forsaken or rejected by any of these, we are ‘accepted in the Beloved’. You and I matter! We’re all precious to the Lord, no matter what our circumstances and testings along the way, or how we may feel.
In Jeremiah 1 the Lord reminds the prophet that He knew him before he was formed in the womb, and sanctified and appointed him before he was born. And listen to the words of Jesus in John 15:16 ‘You did not choose me; I CHOSE YOU and APPOINTED YOU to go and bear much fruit, the kind of fruit that endures’.
In the light of eternity it’s not how we start, it’s how we finish” … or, it’s not where we came from, it’s where we’re going to that counts; and even if, unlike Joseph among his brothers, you weren’t the favourite sibling in your family, nevertheless our Heavenly Father has chosen you!
Christ’s death on that old rugged cross means we are ever before Him, carved upon the palms of His hands, for time and eternity; and if we let Him have His way, He will bring about His plans and purposes in our lives, and ultimately enable us to fulfil the destiny He has in store for us. His eye is not only on the sparrow, it’s on you and me, and by royal decree we have a new generational line!
Patricia Lake is now Ellel’s Representative in Curacao, in the Dutch West Indies, where she is now living, having served with Ellel Ministries as Peter Horrobin’s Secretary for almost 20 years. Prior to that she was in ministry in her local Pentecostal church in Birmingham, before feeling the call of God to serve in the healing and deliverance ministry at Ellel Grange in the northwest of England.
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