Uncomplicating Your Calling (Part 2)
Do I have a calling?
If God has called you His own, He has a calling on your life. Having a clear sense of your calling can give so much eternal purpose to your everyday life. We feel inspired by the possibility and in the same breath, we feel intimated by the thought. We easily complicate this idea of “calling” but as followers of Jesus Christ, we share the same call: to make disciples as we love God and love others. How we do it, where we do it, and who we make disciples out of varies but the call remains unchanged.
The specifics of God’s plan for how, where, and who He wanted me to make disciples out of has unfolded slowly over time and in many ways is still unfolding. But in the unfolding, we experience what is perhaps the point of it all — His presence.
This leg of my journey includes communicating God’s truth publicly but for a long time it did not. Much ministry I do it invisible and in the everyday parts of life. I don’t want us to ever confuse significance with visibility. Public ministry is NOT some sort of prize for obedience. Every kind of ministry is simply allowing Him to do His work through you as you grow in Christlikeness. To have eyes to see your hurting neighbour, to serve in your part of the body of Christ, to pray for a friend in need at a coffee shop, or to lay own your life for the people under your own roof. is all ministry because it’s all part of making disciples.
You don’t need a platform to experience His presence, or to have purpose. You simply need to ask Him to make room in your own heart and to bring you those people He wants you to help love and follow Jesus more as you pursue Him yourself.
As my calling includes teaching the Word, I often get asked, “How did you become a writer/speaker?” The answer isn’t obvious to even me. When I glance back over my shoulder, these stories contain a few “pitstops” on my journey that are part a bigger story that God is writing. Every story has many twists and turns, yeses, no’s, good days and hard ones, and getting back up after dropping the ball big time or running away from Him for seasons because God is faithful.
I pray that you hear echoes of God’s story and your own and that these stories these stores are an encouragement to you to answer His call on your life to make disciples. Your obedience doesn’t need to be visible to the world to be visible to God.
May we be those who live a lifestyle of saying yes to God!
10 Therefore, brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election,because if you do these things you will never stumble. 11 For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you. (2 Peter 1:10-11, CSB)