who God calls

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who God calls
Topic Started: Apr 23 2007, 05:17 PM (39 Views)
oceanweed	Apr 23 2007, 05:17 PM Post #1
Advanced Member Posts: 52 Group: Members Member #85 Joined: February 10, 2007	Who God Calls Written by: Reinhard Bonnke Monday, January 01, 2007 The twelve disciples were anything but supermen. How did Jesus choose His apostles? In Luke 6:12-17 we read “Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. And when it was day, He called His disciples to Himself; and from them He chose twelve whom also He named apostles: Simon, whom He also named Peter, and Andrew His brother; James and John; Philip and Bartholomew; Matthew and Thomas; James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called the Zealot; Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot who also became a traitor. And He came down …” Jesus prayed “all night” before He selected His disciples. Usually, it is thought that through the night, God dropped the name of each apostle one by one into the mind of the Lord – “Bartholomew, Matthew, Thaddeaus…” – and that the Lord made a list of Divinely nominated and approved characters. Perhaps He took one hour over each one of them to establish that He had got it right. “He prayed all night” means, so experts say, twelve hours, one hour for each apostle. Now, I dare to ask, was that really what He did – to ask for guidance to chose men with just the right calibre and potential, men whose greatness God could see beforehand? Were they to be people whom a judge of character would designate for high office? Or was Jesus in fact wrestling with that as a temptation by chosing men whose natural capacities would prove to be adequate; men with distinguished and noble qualities, the great, the brilliant, the influential, the mighty? I can imagine that it could be so. It could have been twelve hours of prayer struggling between the natural way of the world to plan success, by appointing gifted men, and God’s way. The Divine method throughout the Old Testament was that God chose nobodies, rejects; “the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:28). People Called Into His Service Jesus prayed and came back to pick the most unlikely apostles – almost anybody. He bumped into young men without any qualities at all other than very human character traits – impetuous Peter and his quieter brother Andrew, the hot-headed sons of Zebedee, rationalistic Thomas, sociable Philip, and thieving Judas. When God chooses, it isn’t important what we are; it’s what He makes of us that counts. He chose an unlikely bunch of local men. One or two of them were picked only because they were related. James and John were the sons of Salome, who is believed to be the sister of Mary the mother of Jesus. They had always known Him. Jesus took a stroll along the beach where local fishermen happened to be, and called them. It looked almost as if He picked the first young fellows He bumped into that morning. When people are “no good” in Germany, those who constantly fail in their efforts in daily life, we call them “zeros.” However, these are the ones God is especially interested in. When Jesus calls a “zero” and the “zero” responds, he or she will soon find out that the Lord is the Number One, and a zero next to a one equals TEN! In other words: JESUS GIVES VALUE TO EVERY ZERO AS LONG AS HE IS THE NUMBER ONE! The worthless become highly valuable. This is the way God builds His Kingdom. So it was with the first disciples and so it is today. I claim this as my own testimony too. Christ's Secret The world 2000 years ago was a wild place. It was a place of bloodshed, uncontrolled passions, and fanatical hatreds. Its chief pleasures were immorality, idolatry, indulgence, and worst of all, cruelty. The crowds considered it a wonderful days outing to listen to the shrieks of tortured and dying people. The disciples had to take the Gospel to that world, and the Gospel centred on the cruelty suffered by Jesus. It was also a place of much learning. The influences of the great Greek thinkers were strong, and new ideas were eagerly sought. The disciples offered no ideas, but only the story of a crucified Messiah. Peter, James, John, Simon and Thomas were unsophisticated, untutored; they even spoke with a Galilean accent, which was the very opposite of city elegance. What hopes had Christianity, left in the hands of a few rough-handed, unscholarly fishermen; men jealous of one another and full of doubts? So, thinking of these men and their world, from the start, the Gospel looked doomed to fail. Twelve local men who had never traveled 50 miles in their lives, were to go into all the world, the Roman world, conquer its conquering armies, shake the emperor on his throne, and convert the wild tribes on its borders. No doubt, Jesus did anticipate those twelve becoming a world force, but He trusted twelve men, sons of toil, some of them almost peasants, to provide the vital first link between Him and the mighty church to come. Christ’s secret was the empowerment by the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Well, what are WE afraid of? :ph43r: http://us.cfan.org/?lang=en-US



Fouad	Apr 23 2007, 08:18 PM Post #2
Administrator Posts: 267 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: October 19, 2005	Thank you ocean this a great topic about the desciples and prayer of jesus before selected them, this prouve the importance of prayers before any mission we want to start . God Bless you
	(And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature). (Mark 16:15 ) Download Movemegod Toolbar the first christian toolbar http://movemegod.ourtoolbar.com/ Christian Moroccan website


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