Standing Firm in Calling – An Uncommon Understanding

I remember the plain, pale hotel room. I was too sick to leave it. The directors of the board I was travelling with were out for dinner at a local African restaurant in Kampala, Uganda. We were there checking in on our overseas projects.

I had stepped away from my ministry and family duties in Canada to travel overseas and I was asking God to reveal what “surrender” meant for me. Nancy Leigh DeMoss’ small book on the big subject of “Surrender” was tucked in my suitcase, but I had no time alone to read it and pray.

My Calling

Suddenly, unable to eat or even walk to dinner with our group, I had alone time. The presence of God joined me in that hotel room, where he answered my question about “surrender.” In a manner that was clear and forever imprinted on my soul, he called me to give up a ministry I was leading and move on to one I was not invited to take on! He wasn’t daunted by my arguments that his direction wasn’t the kind of “surrender” I was thinking of. Or that I was a sick, miserable mess. After my encounter with God, I knew what I was called to do.

God’s calling required a huge shift in my life for the next five years. The experience was wonderful, fearful and memorable, but it was a calling with a limited season.

An Uncommon Calling

We can certainly sense a calling to a specific task or place, as I did, but the Apostle Paul also opens our hearts and minds to an even greater and broader, uncommon understanding of calling, in Ephesians, chapter 4.

I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Ephesians 4:1-2

A Greater Calling

Paul prepared us for this greater calling. He spent the first three chapters of his letter to the Ephesians describing how we were dead in our transgressions, objects of wrath, but by the incomprehensible grace and mercy of Almighty God, through the love and kindness of Christ, we are saved.

Our greater, uncommon calling is to live as beloved recipients of this grace.

Paul did not limit his definition of calling in this passage to one vocation or role. When he begged us to walk in a manner worthy of our calling, he did not mean for us to strap on some burden of human metrics validated by salary, number of followers, or the accolades we receive. Our truest calling is not to a job or a task.

Rather, he urged us to take on the image and character of Christ for our lifetime. He described what this looks like in Ephesians 4:2. It is a walk in humility, gentleness, patience and love.

What a Relief

I don’t know about you, but this is a great relief to me. I have not always heard as clearly from the Lord as I did in that hotel room in Kampala. Sometimes my knees are knocking as I take next steps, fearful that I could miss God’s very specific direction or calling and mess up.

This passage reminds me that when I am most concerned with growing in the image and character of Christ, I am already right in the center of God’s “calling to which I am called.”

Digging Deeper

Are you sensing a calling from God about what’s next in your life? Are you interested in digging deeper into God’s calling? The inSPIRE journey is intended to help us walk in our uncommon and extraordinary “calling” as God’s recipients of grace, and from there, into the specific callings that will come our way.

Let me leave you here with singer-song-writer Jeremy Camp, as he prays for God to show us what matters, in his song, Keep Me in the Moment.