God Chose You

For the unpopular kid, one of the hardest times of childhood is when we're picking teams. You stand there excited to start the game, ready to get going, eager to show off your skills and, most importantly, to be part of something, but the kids around you go off one by one to their respective sides until all that's left is you.

And then everyone's suddenly ready not to pick you, but to give you away. "You can have him." "No, you take her. I had her last time." 

There's no greater pain through the heart than the pain of being unwanted. 

We're all at some time susceptible to it. Maybe we're not the most athletic, so no one wants us on their sports team. Maybe we aren't the smartest, so they don't want us in their group project. Maybe we aren't the prettiest, so the opposite sex looks right past us. Maybe we don't have a background that's acceptable, so we get pushed off to the side. Maybe we aren't successful enough, don't drive the right car, don't live in the right neighborhood. 

It feels sometimes like the world spends our whole lives drawing lines and more often than our hearts can truly bear, we find ourselves on the wrong side of them. Everyone's been picked. Everyone's settling in. Everyone's got the good life going for them, and here we still stand, and the world's trying to give us away. 

"You can have him." 

Sometimes, we can fall into the trap of believing that God must think the same thing about us. 

That God is always picking someone else to do what we want to do, what we feel gifted to do. That God is always passing us over when He's handing out answers to prayer. That God is kind of kicking around in the dirt a little bit, trying to give us away...or reluctantly accepting us just to get the game started, even though He fully intends to put us on the bench. 

Friends, that's just not the case. 

Paul says, in the opening to his first letter to the church at Thessalonica, that he knows God has chosen them (1:4). I know, brothers and sisters, that God has chosen you. 

Brothers and sisters, do you know that He has chosen you, too? 

Do you know that He wants you on His team? Do you know that He's already been dreaming of what He's going to do with you? Do you know that He sees the strengths you don't know you even have? Do you know that God is the one voice who, even when you feel like you're standing all alone, says, "I want her"? Not "I'll take her," but "I want her." I want her on My team. I want her to be part of what I'm doing. I want her with Me. 

He wants you. He chooses you. 

Yesterday. Today. Forever. And for always.