“You were designed for this.”

My son cannot understand how I drive around without the radio on.  It’s just that so often when I drive I have these great conversations with God, and here lately it seems that He is enjoying this as much or more than I do.

So…last Saturday afternoon I was pulling out of a driveway to return home when I heard that unmistakable voice once again. Get the picture…I had been asked by a pastor friend of mine (one of 15 pastors in our community that pray together every Thursday morning) to baptize a lady related to one of the members of his church.  This elderly lady had gone through a severe medical challenge and through this experience had encountered life! New life in Jesus radiates in her like I have only seen a few times in my life.  She is bound to a wheelchair and yet determined that she would be baptized at a family gathering in a family pool!

Are you getting the picture?  Thirty plus people are gathered around a homemade pool which I would call a “cement pond” to watch wife, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother lowered into the water in her wheelchair.  She gave a joyous testimony, very loudly, and a louder shout of joy with upraised arms when I brought her up out of the water. At that moment she floated out of her wheelchair and I told her that I figured she must have been filled with the Spirit! Once out of the water she challenged everyone in her family to be saved and to get baptized!  I waited patiently in the water as I looked each one in the eye. Many lowered their heads and looked away, but a more clear testimony could not have been given to them all.

I quietly greeted folks and then withdrew realizing that the reactions would be mixed.  For some they may have been relieved to see the “preacher” go.  While others may have been glad for my presence, I was very aware that my role was not as the principal.  I simply felt privileged and full of joy despite the blinding heat.

“You were designed for this.” O.k. so this time I was not so surprised to hear Him speak, but I was confronted with the content.  I had been struggling with my role as a pastor in general and in this community specifically. I am becoming more and more long term as each day goes by and this is happening by submission rather than by personal design.  Personally, I have always felt that I would function best in some large Latin American city and yet here I am in a small town U.S.A. setting.  “You were designed by me to shepherd my sheep.  I did not give them the names they have (Baptist, Methodist, Roman Catholic, etc) I never expected my shepherds to limit themselves by man’s definition.  Shepherd my sheep wherever you find them and where you have found that I have placed you.  And Steve, enjoy yourself!  You were designed for this.”

I guess I’ll just keep riding around without the radio on…

Steve Scarrow

FAC, Moultrie, GA