Do you have an inner sanctum and an outer platform? You need some way to spend time with me for your own sanity and mental and spiritual cohesion, if nothing else. Could you survive without this direct connection? What do you gain by maintaining this relationship? Do you get more than just enough to hold yourself together? Do you also get wisdom and insights and encouragement that you can pass on to others? What do you do when you leave your secret place? Do you have a platform and audience from which you can pass along that which you have received? First you need a light.

Do you learn by reading? Do you tell your friends about the things you learn in books that they too may benefit from the knowledge? Is there anything that you have read that you don’t have the right to declare? The freedom of speech means that you can say whatever you want, but have you ever heard someone say something that they got from reading only, with no life experience to back it up? How much impact does this message have? Consider the multitudes that marveled that I spoke with authority and not as the scribes and Pharisees. This is not to discourage you from reading.

Are you effective at persuading other people? Since you have the message of life you don’t get to opt out, even if you don’t consider yourself to be gifted in this area. Some people are better than others at this, but there are guidelines that everyone can follow. Have you ever been attacked and humiliated? Did you find this persuasive or did it trigger a defensive reaction in you to cling to what you knew even if it was wrong? Other people experience the same thing. Do you admire boldness in the presentation of the gospel? Do you also admire humble entreaty, patience and forbearance?

Do you believe in the idea of the chosen and elect? So do I. So how can you tell them from others? You could look for those who lay down their life, and pick up their cross and follow me. You could look for those who have been sifted like wheat, and submitted to the refiner’s fire. You could look at those who always bear about my death in their own bodies. What about those who are last, being a spectacle unto me, and to angels, and to men; the off-scouring of the world, yet those of whom the world was not worthy? So there really are the chosen and elect.