Are you faithful to your calling?

Not long ago, I got into conversation with a new person at church. On discovering that I'm a missionary, this person commented, "It must be wonderful to have a sense of calling. I've never had a call from God."

To me, this is a sad comment, because it reveals such a complete misunderstanding of what the Bible teaches about the call, or calling, of God's people. So often, when we speak of someone being "called," we're thinking of God guiding someone to go to a particular part of the world or to get involved in a particular kind of ministry activity. But that's only part of the story. The truth is that all of us are called to know God, to reflect His character and to make Him known to others. It doesn't matter whether you do that close to home or whether you travel far away; it doesn't matter whether you're a pastor or missionary, or whether you're a mechanic or a hairdresser. We're all called to love and follow Jesus in the circumstances of our everyday lives.

This week, I was reading in the first chapter of Paul's first letter to the early Corinthian believers. In the first verse, Paul speaks of his own calling: to be an apostle and an evangelist. And then he speaks of the calling of the Corinthian Christians that he's writing to. Right there in the second verse (1 Cor 1: 2) it says, "You have been called by God to be His own holy people."

I couldn't help noticing that, first and foremost, our calling is not about what we should do or where we should go. Those things are important, but they come later. First and foremost, our calling is about who we should be and what we should be like: we are called to be holy because without holiness, other people will not be able to see the Lord through us. (Hebrews 12:14)

I believe with all my heart that, the more we focus on this primary calling of becoming more like Jesus, the more we will grow in hearing God's voice and discovering everything else that is part of His will for our lives.