I was talking with a friend recently about “finding our life’s
purpose in God.”
That’s a tricky one, isn’t it? We want to know what our
calling is for, so we can spend our energy where it’s useful, and where it’s
not. And fairly often, for example when we read the parables of the talents or
the minas, we feel a real urgency about the topic. Sometimes, it feels like we’re
just bumbling around in the fog, instead of actually changing the world. And
all of us, whether we admit it or not, want to have an impact on the world.
I’ve been battering this topic around rather a lot. I grew
up reading stories like God’s Smuggler,
where the heroes heard God say, “Go do this!” and they went and did it, and
there were miracles. I want to be that guy: the one that gets to walk
confidently in God’s leading and in God’s miraculous provision.
I know other folks who have had a prophetic word that’s way
bigger than them, or a vision of something big and effective, or just a longing
for “more” in a particular area of working with God.
We want God to make that happen. Here’s the problem: I’m not
sure that’s a realistic expectation.
I’ve watched folks around me for some decades as they
matured in Christ, and I think I’ve discovered some trends. Obviously, there
are some folks who are not really attentive to their purpose in God; they just
bumble around in one degree of contentment or another, attending conferences,
complaining about difficult things, consuming resources and not really
impacting the world around them. I’m not talking about them today.
But among those of us who are concerned for what God is
planning for us, I think I see three broad categories:
a) Servants: These are the ones to whom God gives a good
roadmap, and leads them along the way to the end of the line, sometimes
step-by-step. These people often have amazing stories to tell of God’s leading.
Frankly, I suspect that some of these folks are asking out
of immaturity (servants ask permission, sons not so much). But some seem to be
mature in it, though I myself don’t see many of mature saints in this category.
b) Sons: These people have a rough idea of their calling,
and they know their Father, so they just run off and do the things that are consistent
with that calling. Most of the time, they learn more about their calling along
the way.
The apostle Paul was in this category. Occasionally, God
would give him a dream (“Go there!”), but most of the time, he just went. And
he planted churches everywhere he went, because that’s who he is. I know an
apostle who’s planted churches and Bible schools on three contents, and he says
that God hasn’t told him to start any of them. That’s just his calling, and so
he’s started hundreds of churches and dozens of schools by now, just being who God
made him to be.
c) Useful: There are a lot of folks who would have a
terrible time describing their calling, but instead are big on “do what’s right
in front of you.” Is there a need to meet? Then meet that need! There are
ALWAYS needs right in front of us; which ones we see, which ones we’re drawn
to, may be a clue to our calling, but knowing the calling is less important
than just “taking care of business” with the things around us. These people
make “bumbling around in the fog” a means to being effective in ministry!
I’ve spent decades as one of these people, and it has seemed
to work out pretty well. Over the course of meeting those needs right in front
of me, I’ve discovered that the needs that I see, the needs that I’m most
comfortable meeting, fit into categories, so I’ve moved from a category c) guy
to a category b) guy, just by virtue of continually bumbling along.
It’s easy to pooh-pooh the Bumbling Around Method of Finding
Your Calling. A lot of us want the kind of direction from God that we’re used
to with the matters of this world: a clear email, or an owner’s manual, or even
a quick-start guide. We want clear, easy-to-follow directions. Bumbling around
in the fog is uncomfortable, darn it!
But God doesn’t very often do that. Even his specific
instructions to Paul (Acts 9) were pretty fuzzy: “This man is my chosen
instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the
people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” That’s
pretty vague.
Sometimes God gives us a vision or an understanding of
something really cool, really mature, and very often it’s a lot of our heart’s
desires. For me, it involved Brother
Andrew and God’s Smuggler, and it involved Corrie Ten Boom and The Hiding
Place. For others, he speaks to them, like he did with Paul, about the end
game: This is who you’ll be when we’re
all done. Sometimes it’s just a vision or a dream, or a longing that’s hard to
get rid of.
And we want God to wave his magic wand and make that happen.
Or at the very least, to make the Treasure Map appear, with the great big X
that marks the spot.
Yeah, no. I’ve never once - not in my life, not in the life
of anyone I’ve ever known or heard about, and not in the life of anyone in
Scripture - ever seen God wave his wand and make people into the thing they see
in the vision, the experience. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone for whom
God gave them any Quick Start guide that was more than that initial prophecy or
vision or longing.
Even the apostle Paul! God knocked him off his ass and
blinded him for 3 days, but then he took him into the wilderness for perhaps as
many as seventeen years, where he trained and mentored him.
He gives the glimpse (prophetic word, vision, longing,
whatever) of the end of the process for three key reasons that I can tell
about:
1) That glimpse is a target, it’s to help us make choices to
aim at that end result, rather than aiming for something that’s not consistent
with the way he’s built and accessorized our lives. For example, my glimpse, my
longing, is always about equipping saints, and that helps me not try to focus
my life on interpreting tongues or mercy ministries. Those are important and
valuable, and they are not my area of calling.
2) It’s to give hope: this is where he’ll take you, provided
that you’ll walk with him. I’m of the opinion that hope is under-valued in our
world today. Some years ago, God spoke to me about a “worldwide ministry of
teaching about the Kingdom of God.” The internet had not even been invented
then, so it was hard to imagine a worldwide influence, but the hope of being
able to influence saints in favor of participating in God’s Kingdom kept me
moving through some times where it would have been easy to crawl home and hide
under a rock. (“I can’t do that, there’s this vision out there for me!”)
That illustrates a key principle: what the end result looks like will probably be remarkably different than what we thought it would look like, what we still think it should look like. I think God does that on purpose, because if we saw the end result too clearly, we'd likely rely on our own skills to get there, rather than relying on walking with him to get there.
That illustrates a key principle: what the end result looks like will probably be remarkably different than what we thought it would look like, what we still think it should look like. I think God does that on purpose, because if we saw the end result too clearly, we'd likely rely on our own skills to get there, rather than relying on walking with him to get there.
3) I think he’s just so excited about our future that he
just wants to share it with you! Like any good daddy, he’s terrifically excited
about sharing his secrets with his kids, particularly the kids that are going
to grow up and inherit the family business.
Paul says, in Romans, “... whatever is not from faith is
sin.” So if God just handed us the Complete Guide to Your Eventual Ministry
Once You’ve Grown Into Maturity, we wouldn’t need it. And we might not even
grow into maturity. If we saw our path to that goal so clearly that we knew every
step of the process, then our faith would be superfluous; we’d walking by
sight, not by faith.
And “Faith,” it has been said, “is spelled R-I-S-K.”
And “Faith,” it has been said, “is spelled R-I-S-K.”
The process of getting from where we are now to the place of mature ministry of our
vision or prophecy will involve risk. It will involve asking ourselves, “Did
God really say that?” and “Is God really leading me in this direction?” And
every step of the way - whether we get it right or get it wrong - is moving us
to that goal, as long as our heart is set on following Him!
Besides, once we’ve read the last book of the Bible, we get
a good understanding of how important it is (to Father and to ourselves) to be
an “Overcomer.” And how shall we ever become overcomers if we don’t have
doubts, questions, obstacles, enemies to overcome?
Maybe bumbling around in the fog isn’t such a bad thing.
Maybe that’s the best way, the fastest way, to reach our goal after all.
Onward! Through the fog!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please feel free to add your own raves, rants, or discoveries: biblical, theoretical or personal.
Off-topic or disrespectful comments will be removed.
And most anonymous comments probably won't make it either.