Ready to Go for God

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Our reading, titled Ready to Go for God, was written by Kenneth Peterson. The book Hidden Figures recounts preparations for John Glenn's flight into space.

Computers were newfangled inventions in 1962, subject to glitches. Glenn didn't trust them and worried about calculations for the launch. He knew one brainy woman in the back room could run the numbers. He trusted her.

If she says the numbers are good, Glenn said, I'm ready to go. Katherine Johnson was a teacher and a mother of three. She loved Jesus and served in her church. God had blessed Katherine with a remarkable mind. NASA tapped her in the late 1950s to help with the space program.

She was Glenn's brainy woman, one of the human computers they hired at the time. We may not be called to be brilliant mathematicians, but God calls us to other things. To each one of us, grace has been given as Christ apportioned it, Paul writes in Ephesians 4. We're to live a life worthy of the calling we've received. We're part of one body in which each part does its work. Katherine Johnson's calculations confirmed the course trajectory.

Glenn's launch into orbit was like hitting a bullseye. But this was just one of Katherine's callings. Remember, she was called also to be a mother, teacher and church worker. We might ask ourselves, what has God called us to do?

Whether big or small, are we ready to go? Exercising the grace gifts He's bestowed? Living a life worthy of our calling?

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Ephesians chapter 4 verses 1 through 7 and verses 11 through 16. As a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us, grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.

And now picking up at verse 11. So Christ Himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip His people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head that is Christ.

From Him, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. Let's pray. Dear God, please help us embrace what You've given us and to live lives worthy of Your calling in our family, our career, in our church and community and wherever Your calling may take us. Thank You, Lord. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening today. I'm Stephen Tabor and today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.