Your Divine Invitation to Play an Irreplaceable Role

Marjorie felt like her life was set in stone.  She would always be stuck at this dead-end job.  Others always seemed to have it better than her...more money, prettier, the attention of the boss.  She was enduring the constant disappointments of life but she was trying to do it nobly.

No other life seemed possible...she was stuck.  Life had not turned out at all the way she thought it would. This must be God’s will for her life. This must be her cross to bear until someday in Heaven when everything would be better.  It’s just the way things are in a sin-fallen world, she told herself.  

Then one day while reading a book from a famous Christian author, she got a glimpse that maybe there was more to life than she had been experiencing.  Her longing for more got awakened. She felt Jesus wooing and calling her to a new way of living. It was a divine invitation to play an irreplaceable role in history.  

All her striving and arranging to make things happen in her life before had been fruitless but now as she simply accepted the invitation her whole life changed.  She says it took courage to accept the invitation but she had such a deep desire to find the life her heart had been dreaming of that she simply could not decline.  She had to remain steadfast in faith as obstacles came up and have some tenacity to not abandon all hope when things didn’t change immediately. But she became the woman she was born to be and the kingdom of God was never the same.  

Mary, Jesus’ mother, also received an invitation from God to play an irreplaceable role.  She could have said no. I wonder if the angel appeared to anyone else first and they declined the invitation because it would be scandalous to be pregnant without being married?  Maybe they didn’t have the courage. 

All the great movements of God over the history of the earth have had men and women that accepted an invitation from God.  But perhaps you doubt that anything important hangs on your acceptance of the invitation. After all, you are nothing special, normal at best. 

Such thoughts come from a long assault on your life from your enemy. He knows who you could be and he must keep it hidden from you at all costs.  He sees behind the curtain of the physical realm into the spiritual realm. He sees the bigger picture of what is at stake. If he can just keep you distracted with the problems of this world and keep you feeling like you are a nobody in the grand scheme of life, then he won’t have to fear you.  

There is a lot of work to be done for the kingdom of God these days and as part of the royal family, you need to play your part.  But it’s not a pressure-filled, striving, anxious type of work. Rather, it’s a divine invitation to let God flow through you to the world.  

Do you have some dream, some desire, something that just feels like a part of who you are?  Do you have a longing to fulfill the role you are meant to play for such a time as this? You must accept the invitation.  Someone’s life is hanging on you living out your destiny.

No, you might not be the next big thing like the mother of Jesus or Billy Graham.  But it doesn’t make your life any less remarkable. I’ve been thinking about the millions of Israelites that were part of the exodus from Egypt.  Oh, sure we know the names of Moses, Aaron, Miriam, Joshua and Caleb, but what about the others that played irreplaceable roles in the story and yet their names don’t roll across the screen in the credits of the movie I watch each Easter?  

What about the woman who feels she has given up a large chunk of her own life to stay at home and raise her children?  Irreplaceable. What about the woman who quietly, without fanfare and acknowledgment from the stage at her church is faithfully serving at the women’s prison each month and changing lives?   Irreplaceable. What about the woman who bakes a casserole for her coworkers’ family after the death of a loved one? Irreplaceable.

The invitation that Jesus extends to each of us will look different.  Some will be more public. Some will be more dangerous. Some will require more of a sacrifice.  All are applauded in the kingdom of God.

Your stress levels will decrease and your joy and peace levels will increase when you accept the invitation of God to play your irreplaceable role.  It will bring meaning and purpose to your life. It will get your eyes off of yourself and the mundane.  

You’ll find that God will restore your heart, healing its wounds, and setting you free when long-lost passions and dreams are stirred up.  Do you feel the invitation drawing you to make the world a better place? It’s part of your royal duties. It’s in your very spiritual DNA.  

“The place that God calls us is that place where the world’s
deep hunger and our deep desire meet.”
Frederick Buechner

Today won’t you accept this article as if God wrote it Himself to you as a divine invitation to join Him in His work of reconciling the world to Himself? (2 Corinthians 5:19)  After all, each week I don’t just write whatever I feel like.  I ask God, “What message about stress do you need to get out to the world and want to use me to get it out through?”

What is the divine invitation you have received from God? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

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