God’s Call On Our Lives
With this post I am taking a break from my series on the wrath of God. I’ll get back to wrath, but I felt compelled to publish this post today.
A bible-study group in Houston that I belonged to is reading ‘The Call’ by Os Guinness. I am joining them in reading the book from a distance. It is a powerful book, filled with deep wisdom. It was obviously written under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
On my walk up the hill today I began reflecting on what ‘call’ means to me. As I walked, thoughts flooded through my mind. I am home now, sitting in front of my computer trying to capture these thoughts in some sort of non-random way. Also I hope, under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
As I have written in this Blog, I believe Scripture is clear – the gospel of the New Testament is the gospel of the Kingdom of God (see Luke 4: 43; Matthew 4: 23 NIV, NKJV, for example. The Greek word ‘preach’ means to proclaim the gospel. “Preach the Kingdom of God”, means to proclaim the gospel of the Kingdom of God). Placing our call within the gospel makes the idea of call much clearer to me. Call has two parts: First, we are called to enter into the Kingdom, live with Jesus, and be His Kingdom people – the rule and reign of Christ in our hearts. Second, we are called to use our gifts to release the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world. Simple, clean, and profound. These two parts of call cannot be separated.
Within this gospel or Kingdom context, call is not one thing. It is several things. First, it is the principle way we partner with God to accomplish His ultimate purpose – to release the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world for the purpose of taking back the territory from satan and permanently pushing back the darkness in this defiling kingdom age. There is another way to say the same thing – the call is the assignment or job (or privilege) to reach into the unseen real or the invisible realm, grab whatever God hands me, and then to bring whatever that is into the visible realm, that is our world, and make it visible to everyone around me for His glory and His honor.
But the call is more than that. It is a way of living, a part of me that becomes my main focus in life. It becomes my passion. The call is never far away from my conscious thought. It is also a context – when I see something in life that God allows me to observe, the call provides the framework into which I can fit that thing to make God a little bit more real to an unbelieving world.
The call is also a journey. As I accept and live into the call I find that there are things in my life that are hindering my ability to answer the call. These things, whatever they are, need to be renounced and removed. Perhaps they are strongholds of some type. Perhaps they are particular sins that keep me from fully answering the call. As I let the call become more and more of who I am in Christ, I grow into the likeness of Him. I will never completely fulfill my call. I am always learning and growing into the deeper dimension of the call. It is a journey and the call is my way of traveling deeper into the heart of God. As Isaiah wrote, “This is the way. Walk in it”.
The call gives my life meaning and purpose. It is a way of serving Jesus by using the gifts God has given me. Therefore, my call is not like your call. My call is unique to me. I suppose I can call the working out (or walking out) of my call my journey with Jesus. You might walk in one way. I might walk in another. Neither is better than the other. The only thing that matters is that we are obedient to God’s call – “Deny yourself, pick up your cross, follow me”.
The call in one’s life is a Kingdom gift. A man or woman living in the kingdom of the world might sense God’s call on their life, but in general they cannot fulfill that calling. A call is not something you do in your own power. A call is a partnership between you and the Holy Spirit. That is what makes it such an amazing gift. A person living in the kingdom of self, aka the kingdom of the world, worshiping whatever gives them value and acceptance in that world, has not yet surrendered to God. That person is not living in the Kingdom of God, defined as the rule and reign of Christ in their heart, and does not have the indwelling Holy Spirit. Apart from life in the Kingdom I cannot live out my call.
Calls are not just for ‘holy’ people. A call is for every one of God’s Kingdom people. A call can be fulfilled in the home, in the office, on the golf course, at the construction site, driving a truck, in the laboratory, in the artist’s workshop or studio, at the hospital, in the prayer closet or pulpit, or in front of a computer. A call is independent of age – my 4-year old granddaughter has a call. Children are more likely to perceive a call in their life than their parents. Although children have not knowingly ‘chosen’ the Kingdom of God, in their child-like faith they are often Spirit-filled.
Lately God has shown me how believing artists are some of the most called people. Painters, sculptors, potters, woodworkers, musicians, and other artisans live to create. They have a high calling – they bring something into existence out of nothing. Well, not out of nothing. They can take a tube of paint and a blank piece of canvas or paper and produce something of incredible beauty. Or they take a pile of lumber, or metal, or clay and fashion a thing of breathtaking beauty.
They are men and women after God’s own heart – first and foremost, God is the Creator. I was speaking with several artists last week and as I talked with them about their work God gave me a vision. In this vision I saw one artist push his fist through a thin rubber membrane. I could see in my vision that he opened his hand on the other side of the membrane and grabbed something. He pulled his arm back into the room he was standing in and took what he grabbed and began to make it into a beautiful piece of art.
God showed me that the thin membrane separated the invisible but real realm of the supernatural (the unseen real) – heaven if you want to call it that – from the visible realm. The artist had taken something from God, which was invisible to most of the world, and through his art made is visible for the entire world to see. When that art is displayed in a museum (or wherever God wants it to be seen), everyone – believer and unbeliever – will see, touch, and experience some part of God’s heart. They will be impacted by what they see, even if they are not aware of His presence in that moment. This is one example of what it means to release the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world.
Believers who preach, teach, prophesy, and write do the same thing. They reach into the unseen real, grab what God gives them, turn that gift into words, and then share the words with the world – either verbally or in written form. In this way, they release the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world. In much the same way, a research scientist developing new ideas or products has the ability to tap into the mind of the Creator of the universe to solve problems and create new ways of thinking — God’s ways.
Maybe healing is the same thing. A believer reaches into the unseen real, grabs ‘healing’, and then releases healing into the body of someone in the visible world. I hadn’t thought about healing in that way before.
I have a friend who is a carpenter. He has done several medium-sized jobs on my house. The way he does his work with creativity, precision and integrity is very Godly to me. When I see his completed work, I sense the presence of God. Somehow his work releases the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world, effecting change.
It is like this for every calling, although each calling is unique because each person has a unique set of Kingdom gifts.
I think you get my point. Every believer has a calling. Every believer is called in whatever place God puts them and with whatever gifts He has given them to make His invisible character visible in the world around them. Ultimately, it comes down to this: God is love. That is His essential nature. In all that we do, our call is to make that love known to the world around us.
If we are living into God’s call in our lives, it is possible that we are beginning to feel self-satisfied, maybe even arrogant. Pride can slowly seep into our hearts. This is why our call must always be seen as a partnership with the Holy Spirit. We don’t release anything into the world in our own power. It is not us! It is not me! If I stay focused on the Spirit, remembering that whatever I release into the world through my call has been given to me by God, I will remain humble. Everything I have is a gift. The artist that begins to believe that it is his skill alone will soon begin to make art that does not convey the mystery and the wonder that comes only from God — it will no longer convey the awe that is rooted in the unseen real. In a sense the art becomes a ‘corruption’, as pride — the kingdom of the world — enters the work.
Living into our call is a place of great joy and fulfillment. Constantly connected to God, reaching into the unseen real to make the invisible visible is the source of great value and freedom. Our response, remembering the source of the gift, is gratitude.
Is it fair to say that a call can be best accomplished by a Kingdom man or woman? If my idea of call is correct, then generally I would say the answer is ‘yes’. But it is not a good idea to limit God. God can use anyone to do whatever He needs them to do. Many famous people in history have answered the call of God, stepped into the breach, and brought victory out of darkness. I am guessing that some of them were not Kingdom people. I suppose that many artists are not living in the Kingdom of God. They make good, even great art. But does this art connect the observer with the heart, the presence of God? Or perhaps the presence of something dark and anti-God? When the observer walks away do they carry with them a deeper sense of having been in the presence of something sacred, transcendent, greater than themselves? And does this presence linger or reside in their hearts, drawing them one step closer to God the Father? Like I said, God can use anyone – let’s not put Him in a box. But generally, I would say not – there is art created under the influence of the call, and then there is art.
Finally, God gave me a tangible metaphor of a call. Actually two metaphors. The first is a transformer. Not the toys or movie characters. A transformer is a piece of electrical equipment that takes current at one voltage and steps it up or steps it down to a different voltage. For example, in the ‘old days’ an American using 120 volt appliances in the UK needed a transformer to step the local 220 volt current down to 120 volts to prevent the appliance from being fried. I see the call in my life as the way to transform something from the invisible, supernatural realm of God into something else in the visible world around me for His glory and fame.
The other is an engine – for example the engine in your car. The engine transforms one substance – gasoline – into something entirely different – motion. More precisely, the engine transforms chemical energy in the complex chemical bonds of the hydrocarbon molecules into kinetic energy – the motion of the car.
Our call does that. It is the ‘transformer’ or the ‘engine’ that takes one thing – the power and character of God – and transforms it into a visible, tangible manifestation of God’s power and character for the world to see with wonder and awe. And in some mysterious way, the wonder and awe of God, even (or especially) for the unbeliever, changes hearts and draws them closer to Him.
Are you a Kingdom man or woman? You have a calling. Fulfill your call, be blessed, and become more like Him each day. For it is only in following His call on your life that you will become the man or woman God created you to be. Call is that important, that central, and that significant.
Grace and peace,
John