Theme: God has been preparing a unique plan and calling for your life since before you were born. (Principle 1 from Made to Count)
Introduction: Sometimes it’s amazing what we have and don’t even realize!
Such was the case in the Philadelphia public school system recently. While working through and cleaning out basements, boiler rooms, closets and hallways in Philadelphia’s cash-strapped schools, some 1,200 works of art, including paintings, sketches, sculptures and murals, were discovered. The amazing part of the discovery – they’re worth tens of millions of dollars.
Evidently, the treasure trove of 19th and 20th century art was slowly amassed by donations and small purchases years ago. What once hung in some of the schools was then taken down and stored away and forgotten about. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Public School System has been deteriorating due to lack of funds to keep the city’s 264 schools functioning at maximum effectiveness and kept up in adequate condition.
An art consultant from the Chicago-based Corporate Art Source declared, “This is an incredibly unusual and extraordinary find. From the collection, over 100 of them are very important works!”
If only the school system had realized what they had as they continued to struggle with their needs.
And it’s the same with us in our spiritual journey. If only we recognized what we have in God’s provision in our life already. Yet too many people miss it because they think there is more they need…when God has already provided everything for the journey. All we have to do is recognize it…
appropriate it
and live it!
I. God Has Given Every One of us a Personal Call.
From the beginning of scripture, God created man for a relationship. From his question in the garden to Adam and Eve, “Where are you?” God has always been in the process of seeking us to bring all of us into a right relationship with Him to maximize life and live it to the fullest.
The simple desire of God for our lives is found in both Old Testament and New…
· Deuteronomy 6:4-5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength…
· Mark 12:30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength…
God has been seeking a love relationship and calling us to Himself.
His desire for our journey is not simply an eternal life once we die – but a quality of life while we are now living. He desires us to be in intimate communication with Him, increasingly growing with Him and regularly being transformed by Him.
Jesus’s earthly ministry was regularly filled with the invitation, “Come unto me…”, “Come follow me…”, “Come be with me…” While He is a transcendant God, He is an interactive and interpersonal God as well. While his nature is holy, righteous and just, His heart is focused on love, forgiveness, grace and mercy. He describes it well in Jeremiah 31:1-3 when He says, “With everlasting love, I have drawn you to myself.”
And that personal calling, when responded to, brings a brand new quality of life. It brings an eternal dimension to our life in the midst of time.
Jesus capsulized it as he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane in the end of His ministry and said, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)
Jeremiah clearly refers to this call as having been started in his mother’s womb. It was there that according to Psalm 139, God was intricately weaving him together for a specific design, plan and purpose in his life. Every aspect of his personality, his temperament, his skills and gifts, his emotional and intellectual makeup were being prepared for the calling and relationship God had prepared for him, as well as the task he had before him.
The Apostle Paul says the same thing in Galatians 1:15 when he said, “God, who set me apart from birth, and called me by His grace, was pleased to reveal His son in me so that I might proclaim Him among the Gentiles…”
Illustration: Have you thought about how amazingly God prepared you even in your mother’s womb to respond to the call that He had for your life? You are fearfully and wonderfully made for a relationship with Him and His plan was in place even before your life began at birth…
· By 15 days after conception, your heart was forming and your eyes were developing.
· By 24 days after conception, your heart began to beat.
· By 35 days after conception, your mouth, ears and nose were taking shape.
· By 42 days after conception, your skeleton was formed and your brain was beginning to coordinate the movement of muscles and organs.
· At 43 days after conception, brain waves could be recorded.
· 8 weeks after conception, you were a well proportioned, small-scale baby with every organ present.
· At 12 weeks after conception, you could kick, curl toes, make a fist, and open your mouth and press your lips together.
· At 4 months after conception, you could grasp with hands, swim and even turn somersaults in your mother’s womb - much to her discomfort!
II. There is Only One Way to Experience God’s Personal Call – Faith.
When Jeremiah realized God’s personal call in his life, he had a choice to make. Would he respond to it or reject it?
As he chose to respond, the only means of response was faith. That has always been the avenue to personal relationship with God…and the opportunity to be used by God.
And that faith is a gift of His grace.
The New Testament describes it as the key that unlocks the door to personal relationship with our creator. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is a gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8,9)
While Jeremiah did not have the joy of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, having come to earth to open the door into a personal relationship with God yet, he was still able to respond by faith. You and I, today, have been given direct access into such a personal relationship with God by means of His Son, Jesus Christ.
The question becomes, have you personally responded to God’s call in your life? It might be helpful to take a quick check-up of God’s call to you and your response to Him…
· God’s design for your life.
God loves you and wants you to enjoy all the peace and joy of an abundant relationship with Him.
“…I have come that they might have life and that they might have it MORE ABUNDANTLY.” (John 10:10)
But if this is the case, why do most people miss this reality?
· Our dilemma – separation of God.
The Bible teaches that it is sin that separates us from the love and call of God – and that is not a respecter of persons.
“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)
“…your sins have caused a separation between you and your God.” (Isaiah 59:2)
It manifests itself through…
Things we say (Matthew 12:36, 37)
Things we do (1 John 3:4)
Things we think (Matthew 9:4)
Things we should do and don’t (James 4:17)
· God’s deliverance – the cross.
The only answer to our sin problem is the Lord Jesus Christ and His payment for the penalty of our sin on the cross. His death and resurrection from the dead bridged the separation removing us from a loving God.
“God demonstrates His love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ dies for us.” (Romans 5:8)
Jesus is not merely one of many ways to God’s forgiveness and personal relationship…nor is He simply the best way to a relationship with God.
Instead, Jesus is the only way to a personal relationship with the God who created us.
“And there is salvation and no one else; for there is no other name under Heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)
· The importance of our decision of what we do with Christ.
By personally inviting and receiving Jesus Christ into our life as both Lord and Savior, we trust Him to change our life – and experience the love of God firsthand.
But God didn’t make us robots to just automatically respond according to His desire, he gave us the free will to choose. That means we must make the choice. We do that by…
1) Admitting our need for God.
2) Honestly repenting (turning from the way we’ve been living to the way He desires us to live).
3) Asking Him personally into our heart by faith through prayer.
“If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.” (Romans 10:9, 10)
And if you’ve never done that before or been sure beyond doubt, you could now by a heartfelt prayer something like this…
Lord Jesus, I need you. I realize I am a sinner and have broken your heart by my natural nature of independence from you and my actions and attitudes that have grieved you. Please forgive me.
I know that you died on the cross to pay for my sins. I ask you right now to come into my life as my savior – forgiving my past and as my Lord – to directing my future. I give you control of my life.
Change my life and help me to become everything you created me to be and to experience the personal relationship with you you’ve called me to. Amen.
III. There is a Purposeful Call.
Life for Jeremiah – or for the Apostle Paul, God has amazing plan for every one of our lives. Just as He has made us unique, He has a unique plan that He has created that only we can fulfill.
For Jeremiah, it was to be a spokesman to his time as a prophet. For Paul, it was to be a teacher and speaker to the New Testament church.
For some today, it is still to go into vocational ministry and missions. But for many others, it will be to go to be Christian business leaders, Christian professionals in areas such as law and medicine, stay-at-home moms, and people that God places throughout His entire fabric of society to be His representatives and carry out His purposes right where they’re planted.
Jeremiah 29:11 assures all of us that God had a special plan for us when he says, “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Going to the church and listening to the subject of God’s call discussed, it was easy to get an incorrect impression that went something like this:
· If you’re super-spiritual and totally surrender to God, you’ll go to the international mission field.
· If you’re fairly spiritual and somewhat surrender, you’ll become a missionary right at home in your own country.
· If you’re even a little spiritual, yet sensitive to God’s calling, then you’ll at least surrender to full-time Christian ministry or the pastorate.
· And then, for those that want to have their cake and eat it too, you can still try to serve God in a secular arena if you can somehow find a way to make it spiritual. (MADE TO COUNT by Reccord and Singer, p. 25)
The tongue and cheek listing indicates how a lot of people interpret what they hear in church yet nowhere does God indicate that He only calls people to vocational missions and ministry. It is wonderful that He does call to those important roles for it is they who equip the church to do its incredible work in the world (Ephesians 4:11, 12). But in now means do they have a corner on the market.
In fact, many of the heroes of Scripture were not in the “professional clergy category” at all. Instead, they were people from what we would call the workplace of life – military leaders, government and political leaders, farmers, ranchers and herdsmen, trades people, etc. In fact, often Hebrews 11 is referred to as the Hall of Fame of Faith due to the fact that it lists some of the great heroes of faith God has used powerfully throughout Old Testament history. Yet go back and review the list of names one additional time asking, “How many priests and prophets are listed by name in this chapter?”
You’ll find that most are people in the workplace – people like Mrs. Andy Darlington, a high school teacher at Houston High School in Germantown, Tennessee, who was selected the 2004 Christian Educator of the Year in public schools. While being a teacher, brilliantly disguised as a public school teacher, she also sponsors the largest club on the high school campus which happens to be a Christian club with almost 250 students participating.
One of her fellow colleagues described her as “a teacher who loves her students and loves her Lord, and both are daily evident.”
Rick Husband, the commander of the tragic Columbia space shuttle flight, would be another. While serving as a pioneer explorer in space, Rick also had received a calling from His Lord to be On Mission for Christ right in the middle of his work for NASA. While not on flights, he and his wife, Evelyn, would host bible studies for astronauts and their spouses, helping introduce them to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Before the launch of the fateful trip in January of 2003, Rick wondered what he could best leave to his children to be reminded of him everyday he was on his 17-day space flight. It would remind them of what was most important to them. Having struggled with the thought, he determined to do a daily video devotional for both his son and his daughter, speaking to each of them individually for all seventeen days he was gone. They had just watched his last devotional when they left for the landing area at which he would never arrive.
Christian music artist Steve Green speaking at Rick’s memorial service, described Rick’s understanding of his calling when he said…
“Rick was a shining example of someone who understood his calling. He had been gifted and called into the arena of service as an astronaut. He was the best he could be and he did it for the glory of God.”
CONCLUSION:
Have you experienced God’s personal call in your life?
Have you responded to God’s personal call in your life?
Have you discovered God’s purposeful call in your life?
If not, why not now?!
