2024 Fasting Devotional

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

1 Peter 2:9–10

Knowledge of the fact that we have been chosen by the Lord is truly humbling and can actually be overwhelming as well.

We begin with this overwhelming sense of gratitude because we realize we are so undeserving. These feelings lead to intense service because of a steady growing knowledge of all that has been accomplished on our behalf. We now belong to the Lord that we may be able to proclaim Him to the world.

The danger is that this can then lead to a sense of pride because we begin to realize all that we do on behalf of the Lord and that everyone that belongs to Him isn’t serving Him as fervently. This can then lead to feeling overwhelmed for an entirely different reason than at the beginning.  When we begin to examine what we do on behalf of the Lord, and we begin to construct a picture of why He chose us, the feeling can be truly overwhelming.  But I want to encourage us to destroy this picture of ourselves immediately, because there is no truth to it.

The Lord didn’t choose us because of our great ability, He chose us in spite of our shortcomings. This is true for every believer who has come before us as well—even the ones we admire so much. The authenticity of Scripture proves this to be the case, as we see even the low points of their lives exposed for us to read and learn from.  Each one of our Biblical heroes bore a multitude of shortcomings.  From Moses to David to the Apostle Paul, they were all wrestling with the reality of their humanity and the undeniable weaknesses of their flesh. 

Humility and thinking soberly about ourselves is indeed a hard truth to grapple with, but we must continuously acknowledge it as the truth. In doing so, we will be careful to not lose the zeal that originally caused us to embrace the faith that we now enjoy. The Lord has chosen to be gracious to us, and for that our lives should forever show our gratitude to Him.