I used to be afraid that God was going to make me a missionary and send me to Guam. Nothing against that country, but it felt a long way from home and not somewhere I wanted to go teach kids the Jonah story.

And I honestly thought that if I gave my all to God, that if I turned over my whole life, he would turn it upside down instantly. So I held back. I gave him chapters. I shared my relationships, my school life, my home life, but kept certain things for me, because he couldn’t be trusted. I didn’t want to do the stuff I knew he was going to make me do.

Have you ever felt like that? That if you said to God, “wherever, whatever and whenever,” your life would be just wrecked? I did, but in the Bible, Jesus doesn’t seem to ever do that. One of the verses that really convicts me is Matthew 4:19. Here is what it says:

"Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men."

Christ was talking to Simon and Peter when he said that. They were fishermen. That statement made all the sense in the world. But in my interpretation of God, that doesn’t work. Isn’t God supposed to shake our lives up and send us to do far away things in far away places? I mean Andrew and Simon were probably good at fishing, they understood it and maybe even liked it. So why would God ask them to do that? Shouldn’t they go to Guam?

I think the truth is that when we turn ourselves over to God, he doesn’t make us into someone else. He makes us into who we have always been. He amplifies the parts of us that are true. He purifies the dreams we’ve always had or the skills we’ve always used. He doesn’t turn poets into mathematicians or scientists into painters. If anything, I think he gives artists even more colors to create with, scientists even bigger labs to experiment in and so forth.

I’m a writer and when I gave my life to Christ, he didn’t ask me to stop writing. In many ways, he asked me to start writing.

http://www.97secondswithgod.com

Jonathan Acuff is the creative force behind Prodigal John, 97 Seconds With God and the ever popular Stuff Christians Like, a tongue-in-cheek exploration of silly things Christians like.  Jonathan also has a book in the works.