Day Three: Preparation Day

Following Faithfully

     A simple task of transferring an audio cassette recording onto a multi-track recorder took me several months to accomplish. Most of that time was spent reading the owner’s manual and figuring out what all the buttons did. I was determined and in the end I had successfully made a CD of my favorite live recordings of the music my late husband had recorded of his bands. I was unaware that this therapeutic session down memory lane after my husband’s death was also a time of preparation. All I wanted was to preserve his music on CD for his kids.
     Mission’s month at church commenced shortly after I finished that CD. Every week a new missionary would speak and let us know what impact they were making for God in some far off place on the planet. I wanted God to call me to go out to a far place, too, but I was now a single parent with four children. I left those Sunday morning services feeling sorry for myself and asking God why he didn’t want to use me too. Why not me?
     One Sunday morning in the lobby a missionary came up to me and said he had heard I might be able to help him. “Is it true you have a home recording studio in your basement?” I informed him that it was actually my late husband’s but I was learning how to use it. “Perfect,” he said, “I am learning how to do a radio show and wondered if you would be willing to record it for me so I can send it to Uganda.” God had prepared me just enough to serve on a missionary project to a far off place on the planet right from my own basement.
2. How can you demonstrate your willingness to follow Him faithfully into whatever he knows is next for you?
     My mind was calculating all the reasons to say, "No." Afterall, this was not my studio. I knew very little about multi-track recording and I had yet to get a handle on managing four children on my own; my home was a wreck. As my mind reasoned, "No," my lips said, "Yes." Every fiber of my being  told me that the meeting of my preparation and the call of my heart to reach far off places was not a coincidence. God knew exactly what was next for me.
   All the disciples thought they were doing was looking for the Messiah. They had heard John the Baptist call Jesus the Messiah and they were thrilled to have found him. They didn’t realize that were being prepared to later leave everything to follow him. Often during times of preparation, we don’t know what we are being prepared for or even that we are being prepared. For that reason, I found the first question Beth asks us difficult to answer.
1. At this season of your life, what do you sense you need most; preparation for a fresh work of God or repair from a tear or restoration fall?
     Looking back on my missionary work to Uganda, I can see how God took a period of repair and used it to prepare me for a fresh work. It is much easier to look back from a work and see how you were prepared than to realize you are in the middle of being prepared. That is why as her second question implies we must be willing to follow him through our preparation, repair, or restoration into where only He knows what is next for us. 

Study Outline:

• Follow along in JOHN: 90 Days with the Beloved Disciple by Beth Moore pages 13-16
• Read John 1:35-42
• Answer the following questions in your study guide:

             1. At this season of your life, what do you sense you need most; preparation for a fresh work of    God or repair from a tear or restoration fall?

            2. How can you demonstrate your willingness to follow Him faithfully into whatever he knows is      next for you?

•  Share a brief highlight or two from your thoughts and answers in a comment posted to the group. (Read guidelines and cautions posted August 1, 2010 before you post).
• Read the comments of others and share your thoughts and encouragement with them by replying to their comments. Identify which post you are responding to by addressing them and their subject or pasteing a brief portion of their reply at the start of your post.

 PRAY WITH ME:

 Lord, we trust that you know exactly where we are at all times. Help each one of us to willingly follow you through our times of preparation, when sometimes you feel so far away, help us not to lose sight that you alone know where we are going next and what we need when we get there. Thank you for those times of preparation, the times of repair and restoration, and also those times of great production when we rejoice in the abundance of fruit that comes from times of preparation. In Jesus name, Amen.