Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
He said, “Go and tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
“Make the heart of this people callused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”
Then I said, “For how long, O Lord?” And he answered:
“Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken. And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste. But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.”
Character Check What challenging work is Jesus calling me to this week?
In Business Terms In the church sometimes we’ll call up somebody in mid-August and say, “Sorry we’re late, but we wonder if you would like to teach the eighth grade Sunday school class starting right after Labor Day? It doesn’t take much preparation. It’s not a lot of hard work. You can do it. We know you can.”
That’s no way to get anybody to reach his or her potential. It’s wrong to offer people easy work. Few things in life are more insulting than to be offered an easy job.
Many years ago my wife and I attended a church that was having some special problems with a high school class. These kids were tough to handle. So they asked a capable, experienced woman in the church to help.
“Mary,” they said, “we’d like you to take this class. They’re unmanageable, and we don’t know what can be done with them.”
They challenged her in a wonderful way.
—MaxDePree
Something to Think About The job of a football coach is to make men do what they don’t want to do, in order to achieve what they’ve always wanted to be. – Tom Landry
