I Choose You! 🐣
I found myself stupefied watching the story of Irving “Magic” Johnson and the Showtime Lakers of the 80s. As Magic struggles with the fear of whether he is good enough to make it in the NBA, his father hits him with this nugget:
“When you were still inside your mother, we’d stay up at night holding each other in that Lansing cold just dreaming about your future. (hmph) One night, it’d be Doctor Johnson. Next night, maybe a judge. Never in a million years did I believe or even think, pro ball. If you’re not ready for this league yet, go back to school, son. If you’re not ready ever, I don’t care, I love you. You hear me? My bottom line won’t change, son. Never will.”
It reminded me of God’s words to the prophet Jeremiah:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”Jeremiah 1: 5
This truth is not a justification of mediocrity, but is a comfort in the knowledge that God chooses you. A God that knows you better than you know yourself, flaws and all, chooses you. He chooses you every single micro second of time. He chooses you at every success and every failure. His bottom line won’t change, never will.
I need to hear this way more often than I care to admit to myself. Sometimes I look for it here or there, looking for love in all of the wrong places, but always my heart just needs to hear, “I choose you, I choose you every time,” from my good, good Father.
I think we are in a world that desperately needs to hear this. If you look around, you can see it on people’s faces. We have the great blessing and calling like Jeremiah to reach out to our brothers and sisters with words straight from the thoughts of God. Prayer is sometimes just tapping into what God is saying about this person or situation and sharing it with them. Who in your life needs to hear, “I know you, and I choose YOU,” from our Father?
