The Holy Spirit is in Your Genes

I have often wondered at the path the Lord has led me on. I did not end up anywhere near where I initially set out from. For most of my childhood and adolescence, I wanted to be a genetic engineer. I wanted to help decipher the codes that make up who we are as human beings. I love science, particularly biology.

But halfway through an undergraduate program in biology, God changed the direction in which I was heading. I did not end up being a genetic engineer, I ended up being a pastor, something I had not even conceived of when I started college.

Mark 9:30-37
“They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, 31 because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise."  32 But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it. 33 They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?"  34 But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest. 35 Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, "If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all."  36 He took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 "Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me."  

Now, its not like I received a vision or anything like that, although sometimes I wish I would. I started out with a certain set of assumptions about who I was and where I was going, but as my life cohabitated with the Holy Spirit, those assumptions began to transform. I began to realize that what God had in store for me was so much more than my little plans could contain. Slowly, I began to understand the path He wanted me to take. My assumptions began to totally recede into the background, until for the most part I let God guide me into where He wanted me to be.

The disciples had a certain set of assumptions as well. Every student of ancient history knows that the Jews were waiting for a political savior to throw off the iron yoke of the Romans. But while this may have been in the background, I really doubt the disciples were focused on Jesus as the next President of Palestine. It becomes clear in this passage that their ambitions and desires were much smaller, much more embarrassingly self-centered. They were each vying for position as favored one in the New Regime. And, typically for us humans, it was poorly timed, since Jesus had just told them He was going to be killed. Jesus had revealed much bigger plans for the human race, but their grasping, miserly little minds couldn’t handle it.