Answering the Call: Chapel Reflection with Josh Shaarda
“If you were going to start a team to reach the world for God, where would you start recruiting?” asked Josh Shaarda.
Speaking to members of the Kuyper community assembled in the Vos Chapel on October 8 for a twice-weekly service, he pointed out that God’s choices often surprise us.
“God delights in using people the world has said are unqualified,” said Shaarda, a 2000 Kuyper graduate.
This, he added, is something he knows from firsthand experience. He and his wife Mandy, who also graduated from Kuyper and who he met during his studies, have spent the last 23 years serving as missionaries, first in Nigeria and then in Uganda.
They work with Freedom In Christ Ministries, an organization that uses empowering discipleship resources to spread the transformational way of Jesus all over the world.
He noted that eight years ago, they began recruiting people from a prison in Uganda. Now, they have grown to ministering in 11 prisons, and, he said, God has even raised up a number of former inmates to join their team.
Turning to the story of Jesus sending out the 72, found in Luke 10, Shaarda emphasized that though there are many people like these men, hungry for the Gospel, very few will actually answer God’s call to bring it to them.
“The harvest is plenty, but the workers are few,” he said.
Returning to the passage, he highlighted several reasons for this: following Jesus is costly and can be scary, it requires a level of trust many are unwilling to give, we don’t always know how others are going to respond and we believe we are incapable.
But none of this is disheartening to God, Shaarda added.
“Jesus knows He is the one to draw people to Himself, He just needs someone to speak the message,” he said.
God wants to do great things in our country and in the world at large, Shaarda told the audience, and He wants to do them through each of us.
“There are certain things God has created each of you to do,” he said. “The only question is, are you willing?”