The grippings of God...when he goes after a heart is amazing to me. Does He pick and choose? I do not know that answer to that question, but I am becoming more aware that God does choose to make Himself known to and through the broken, weak things of this world.
Rahab the harlot comes to mind (you know the great, great, great grandmother of King David...who was in the lineage of Jesus...makes for a really good scandal to have a prostitute for a relative, right?!?) Mary Magdeline also comes to mind (again, another scandalous individual who I like to call "Lady Love Much"). Both women swept up into relationships that could not have been anticipated.
First, Rahab...selling her body, making her wage by the hour...leading men (maybe women too) into adulterous and hedonistic acts. Keep in mind there is nothing new under the sun. She was called a harlot, making her living by participating in acts of sexual behavior that would only be defined as vile and idolatrous to a proper, upstanding individual. And on the day of her encounter with the living God, two men came knocking at her door. I wonder if she thought, "Bonus...double down!"? I don't know what went through her mind at first thought, but you can bet she didn't answer the door in her Sunday best and have tea and crackers waiting in the next room. Sure, she had heard the rumors of the Israelites at the river, but this didn't affect her business model. The more the merrier or how else would she provide for herself. She answered the door like any other time....heavy amounts of makeup, jewelry adoring every appendage, see-through silken clothing (if you could call it that) and intoxicating amounts of perfume....all the tools of the trade.
And there He was...face to face with this lady of the evening...in the red-light district...getting ready to interact with eternity. God came a callin'. How did someone so entrenched in the pleasures of the world, get marked as a candidate for the love of God? I'm sure it is a great mystery. One I'm trying to understand myself. Grace....mercy....destiny.
In Luke 7, we see another woman..."Lady Love Much". She did the most offensive thing that one can do in her position. Whether gripped by shame and embarrassment, we can only guess. But she used her worldly charms to "come on to Jesus." (or so it was perceived). She came just as she was, a prostitute, no pretense. And with the only skill she knew she acted; kissing his feet and washing them with her hair, she poured an entire jar of costly perfume on him. The intoxicating aroma filled the entire space. Everyone around Jesus and this Harlot knew exactly what had happened for days afterward. The fragrance of her act surrounding both of them like a pungent cloud. And there He was again...right in the heart of another scandal.
My point is this...I don't think God behaves any differently today. He still chooses to encounter us with the same love that He did to these two women. He is the same God who can reach us in the very act of sin: adultery, addiction to pornography, alcoholism, angry fits, anorexia...all sorts of sinful cravings or struggles. Mostly when we are not expecting Him...He comes to us. Just as we are, at the bar, beside the toilet, alone in our car, in the red light district...He's there; loving, interacting, setting plans, purposes and futures in motion. Grace, Mercy, Destiny!
1 Corinthians 1:21,26-31 (Message) says, "So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.
Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can't begin to compete with God's "weakness."
Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see many of "the brightest and the best" among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That's why we have the saying, "If you're going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God."
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