How Important Am I?

by Dallas Willard

(photo: Angel Isaiah McCann)

Don’t you know that you
yourselves are God’s temple and
that God’s Spirit lives in you?

1 Corinthians 3:16

In the movie Gandhi, the young Indian lawyer and a white clergyman are walking together on a boardwalk in South Africa, contrary to its laws at the time. Some brutish-looking young white men threaten to harm them, but the ringleader’s mother calls from a window and commands him to go about his business.

When the clergyman exclaims over their good luck, Gandhi comments, “I thought you were a man of God.” The clergyman replies, “I am, but I don’t believe he plans his day around me!”
A cute point, but beneath it lie beliefs that make it difficult to take seriously the possibility of divine guidance. One of those beliefs is that we are not important to God. But we were important enough for God to give his Son’s life for us and to choose to inhabit us as living temples. Obviously, then, we are important enough for God to guide us and speak to us whenever it’s appropriate.

Pray: Consider what sort of God would create you, sacrifice enormously for you, choose to inhabit you, but refuse to speak to you? Pray, thanking God for being such a relational God, who chooses to sacrifice for you, inhabit you and have an interactive life with you.
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