Serving Willingly or Unwillingly...

Here’s the question everyone must answer in this life: do you want to be used by God willingly or unwillingly? God will use you to accomplish His will. The question really is will you help Him carry it out, or will you unknowingly (against your will) carry it out? Either way His will gets accomplished. You will either share in his Glory, or be used for His glory and receive no benefits for doing so. For me, I’d rather help God, than focus all my attention on myself, wishing for happiness, when I can know I’m significant, and fulfilling my purpose by serving Him and others. The ultimate reward of serving Him will not compare to the minuscule rewards of living for self might bring. Again, for all those anti-God, Christian haters out there; you will help fulfill the will of God, but you won’t reap the rewards, if you are unaware by not knowing God in the process. Here, the high priest was prophesying without realizing the magnitude of his very words. Killing Jesus to them was to save their way of life, an extremely selfish act. They were serving a much greater purpose, unknowingly, serving the One they pretended to know. The irony of the unbeliever’s life is far more complex than most realize. In the very act of rebelling against God, through selfish acts, you might just end up helping God accomplish great things, like the religious leaders did here in John chapter 11. In your resolve to abandon God, He May use you to bring others to Him. And worse yet, you’ll do it thinking your going against Him in your rebelliousness.

45 Many of the people who were with Mary believed in Jesus when they saw this happen. 46 But some went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 47 Then the leading priests and Pharisees called the high council together. “What are we going to do?” they asked each other. “This man certainly performs many miraculous signs. 48 If we allow Him to go on like this, soon everyone will believe in Him. Then the Roman army will come and destroy both our Temple and our nation.”49 Caiaphas, who was high priest at that time, said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about! 50 You don’t realize that it’s better for you that one man should die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed.”51 He did not say this on his own; as high priest at that time he was led to prophesy that Jesus would die for the entire nation. 52 And not only for that nation, but to bring together and unite all the children of God scattered around the world.53 So from that time on, the Jewish leaders began to plot Jesus’ death. 54 As a result, Jesus stopped His public ministry among the people and left Jerusalem. He went to a place near the wilderness, to the village of Ephraim, and stayed there with His disciples.55 It was now almost time for the Jewish Passover celebration, and many people from all over the country arrived in Jerusalem several days early so they could go through the purification ceremony before Passover began. 56 They kept looking for Jesus, but as they stood around in the Temple, they said to each other, “What do you think? He won’t come for Passover, will He?” 57 Meanwhile, the leading priests and Pharisees had publicly ordered that anyone seeing Jesus must report it immediately so they could arrest Him. John 11:45-57