“Lord, harden me against myself,

The coward with pathetic voice,

Who craves for ease and rest and joy.

Myself, arch traitor to myself,

My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,

My clog whatever road I go.”

Amy Carmichael missionary to India.

 

What Tolstoy wrote of science, applies to all of the sciences: “Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important to us, ‘what shall we do and how shall we live?”

There is no answer outside a quest for purpose, and no answer to the quest is deeper and more satisfying than answering the call that is given to us by God our creator.

What do we mean by calling?

Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamic lived out as a response to his summons and service.

In our own day this question is urgent in the highly modern parts of the world, and there is a simple reason why. Three factors have converged to fuel a search for significance without precedent in human history.

First, the search for the purpose of life is one of the deepest issues of our experiences as human beings.

Second, the expectation that we can all live purposeful lives has been given a gigantic boost by modern society’s offer of the maximum opportunity for choice and change in all we do.

Third, fulfillment of the search for purpose is thwarted by this fact.

Out of more than many of the great civilizations in human history, modern Western civilization is the very first to have no agreed-on answer to the question of the purpose of life. Because of this, there is more ignorance, confusion, and longing, surrounding this topic now than at almost any time in history.

One of the problems is, as modern people, we have too much to live with and too little to live for. Some feel they have time but not enough money; others feel they have money but not enough time. But for most of us, in the midst of material plenty, we have spiritual poverty.

We can find the purpose of our lives, but it can be found only when we discover the specific purpose for which we were created and to which we are called.

Answering the call of our God our Creator is “the ultimate why” for living, the highest source of purpose in human existence.

Is rediscovery of a calling really that critical today?

Colossians 4:17 And say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it.

“Which thou hast received in the Lord.” Our calling is from the Lord. He decides what we should be. If you do not fulfil your calling you will not know fully your purpose in life. The reason so many people are asking, ‘Why am I here.’ is because they are not interested in God’s calling and submitting to it. God has a calling for everyone.

Sometimes we think only preachers, evangelists and missionaries as having a calling. but that is not true. God has a calling for you, and you do not need to take a battery of psychological tests to find out the calling. God will make it clear to you what He wants you to do. If you are earnest to serve the Lord you will hear His voice telling you what to do. Your calling may not be on the stage with all the bright lights, you may be called of God to just sweep the floor. Whatever your calling, do it, for it is from the Lord which makes it very important.

Whom God calls He enables. The enablement must be developed (schooling, practice, and experience), but without the enablement you will not be able to serve. If God had not enabled you to play the piano, do not seek a calling involving the piano. Check your enablements. They will tell you much about your calling. Those who claim a calling but do not have the matching skills, do not know the will of God for their lives.

 Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations. (Jeremiah. 1:5)

Understanding a call has been a driving force in many of the greatest “leaps forward” in world history, the call of Abraham to start God’s new way on earth, the constitution of the Jewish nation at Mount Sinai, the birth of the Christian movement in Galilee, and the sixteenth-century Reformation and its incalculable affect on the rise of the modern world, are just a few.

Writing and reading about calling can never get beyond our poor words about his words.

Those words are  the commanding invitation of Jesus that is both a call and a charge: “Follow me.”

The God who is there, the God who has named himself supremely in Jesus, gathers and transforms his people. Without this transformation so-called Christianity is no Christianity at all. For this God gathers and transforms his people.

Toward the end of Luke 9, three situations are presented of people who volunteer to follow Jesus enthusiastically. Such people today might well find themselves quickly baptized, enrolled, and witnessing, caught up in evangelical efficiency. In these three instances, however, Jesus puts up careful barriers designed to test the level of the voice of commitment:

Luke 9:57 As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”

Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

 

He said to another man, “Follow me.”  But the man replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”  Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family.”

Jesus replied, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:57–62).

Amy Carmichael, missionary to India where she rescued hundreds of orphans amidst much suffering, wrote this poem:

Hast thou no scar?

No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?

I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;

I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.

Hast thou no scar

No wound? No scar?

Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,

And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.

But thine are whole; can he have followed far

Who hast no wound or scar?

 

She wrote the following after seeking God over the fact that she knew as much as she wanted to be married, that her ministry there to girls in India, she could not be married.

On this day many years ago I went away alone to a cave in the mountain called Arima. I had feelings of fear about the future. That is why I went there—to be alone with God. The devil kept on whispering, “It’s all right now, but what about afterwards? You are going to be very lonely.” And he painted pictures of loneliness—I can see them still. And I turned to my God in a kind of

desperation and said, “Lord, what can I do? How can I go on to the end?” And he said, “None of them that trust in Me shall be desolate” (Psalm 34:22). That word has been with me ever since.

Something similar takes place in John 15:17–16:4. Jesus carefully enunciates something of the cost. Christians will face not only the pressures common to all mankind this side of the fall, but will also face special difficulties that are part and parcel of being a Christian.

A similar point surfaces in Luke 9:21. After Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah, Luke comments, “Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone.” Why not? If he is the Messiah, why not announce it? There are different reasons for Jesus’s reticence in different parts of the Gospels, but here the plain reason is what they mean by messiah. What the crowds understand by this word is so bound up with triumphalism, sovereignty, and reign without the cross that in some ways Peter’s confession clutters up the expectations.

Jesus tries to reform their understanding of what messiah means. He says, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life” (v. 22).

Jesus doesn’t let it rest there. He then says to them all, in effect, “By the way, not only am I going to the cross, but if you want to be my disciple, you must go too!” That is his meaning when he says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (9:23)  Jesus is not being very seeker-sensitive! “You want to be a Christian? Great! You’ll need to be crucified.”

We have ways of domesticating the language a wee bit today. For most of us, it does not mean actually getting nailed to or hung on a cross.

It means death to self-interest and rising to newness of life. Even so, Jesus uses this extreme language because he is talking about an extreme death.

Death to self is always painful, yet that’s what it takes to become his disciple.

While they are still thinking of triumphalism and earthly power, while they are doubtless entertaining secret thoughts about which one can be on his right hand and which one on his left in the kingdom, Jesus himself is focusing on his impending death by crucifixion.

Mt 19’18 The command to sell everything and give to the poor is difficult. Here the ruler must not only surrender all rights to his possessions but must also actually dispose of them. This does not seem to be a universal requirement;

The basic thrust of 19:21 is not “Sell your possessions and give to the poor” but “Come, follow me.”

What the word “perfection” suggests here is: undivided loyalty and full-hearted obedience. This young man could not face that. He was willing to discipline himself to observe all the outward

stipulations and even perform supererogatory works; but because of his wealth, he had a divided heart. His money was competing with God;

“Keeping the individual commandments is no substitute for the readiness for self-surrender to the absolute claim of God imposed through the call of the gospel. Jesus’ summons in this context means that true obedience to the Law is rendered ultimately in discipleship”

“The only way to ‘life’ is through the narrow gate of full surrender, and through that gate we may take, not what we want, but only what God allows. Jesus does tell us is that we must not be attached to material things. Jesus’ promise “you will have treasure in heaven” refers to eternal life; and since that is a gift of God and cannot be earned, no saying merit must be attached to the action of giving all to the poor.

A genuine resolution of this problem will begin with the recognition that our theology of conversion is probably inadequate. We are inclined to think that once a person has made a decision, he is saved, and that is that.

There is much biblical evidence to suggest that a person’s spiritual condition should be addressed more according to his behavior and responses than according to what is going on in his very being. True conversion in the Scripture presupposes some genuine change in what a man truly is; but this does not stop the biblical writers from dealing with what a man says and does. Only God can assess the heart; you and I are left to assess words and deeds.

For example, in the parable of the sower (Mark 4 and parallels), Jesus describes four different types of soil. Only one, the “good” soil, bears fruit (in various yields). Of the other three soils, two produce a living plant: the shallow soil on rocky places, and the soil infested with thorns. The hard-packed path bears nothing, because the birds (= devil) come and snatch the seed away; but the other two poor soils do begin to produce something of promise. Indeed, the seed planted in shallow soil seems at first to be the most promising of the lot. Jesus’ description is telling: “Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away” (Mark 4:16, 17). In short, genuine conversion is not measured by the hasty decision but by the long-range fruitfulness.

As John says, “Whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son” (2 John 9).

Cross-Carrying Disciples

Mt 10 38And he that doth not take his cross and follow after me, is not worthy of me. 39He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

That element is the degree of conflict that Jesus anticipates in this evangelistic enterprise. Some entire communities will reject Jesus’ followers (10:11–14). In later years, although their witness will reach to the highest levels of government, those very governments will sometimes impose harsh sanctions (10:17–19). The priorities of the Gospel will split families so severely that some

family members will betray other family members (10:21, 35). At its worst, persecution will hound Christian witnesses from one center to another (10:22–23). In some instances this persecution will end in martyrdom (10:28).

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 Does our religion prompt us passionately to follow God’s words, or to pursue our own religious agendas?

“When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen”  Zech 7:13Therefore it happened, that just as He proclaimed and they would not hear, so they called out and I would not listen,” says the LORD of hosts. “But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they had not known. Thus the land became desolate after them, so that no one passed through or returned;

They had a passionate intensity about the details of religion, including liturgical reformation, but that is worse than useless if it is not accompanied by a holy life. In true religion, nothing, nothing at all, is more important than whole-hearted and unqualified obedience to the words of God.