Category Archives: Calling

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Called to Good Work, not Guess Work

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Ephesians 2:10

Jesus doesn’t just want to just work in you, he wants to work through you.

Jesus works in you so that he can work through you. But, if you live always doing what you want, Jesus will always just be working on you. A poorly treated car will spend more time in the shop than it does on the road. Jesus wants you on the road to go where he prepared for you to go and do what he prepared for you to do. But, if you are always trying to crank the car or take it where you want to, you’ll constantly end up with the mechanic and not on the mission.

Prepared for good works, not guess work.

I want you to know that God, through Jesus Christ, has actually prepared things for you to do. These things are called “good works,” not guess work. These are not good things that you choose or you guess, but works that are ordained by God himself. Too many Christians follow Jesus like it’s bunch of guess work. And when this is the case, then you simply are too far away from Jesus. Those that are close to Jesus don’t have to guess what he is doing or guess what he has prepared for them to do.

I do not want you to think of these good works like some huge, giant-slaying work like slaying Goliath. But rather, a series of good, simple steps that transpire every day of your life. This happens in your home, your office, your car, on your errands, with your spouse, with your kids and as you do life.

Don’t walk toward or away from Jesus, walk in Jesus.

When you guess for Jesus, your guess takes you away from him. Too many Christians are walking toward Jesus when they should be walking in Jesus. There is a supreme difference. Jesus wants to be with you. This is why he made you. Jesus loves companionship. He loves intimacy and fellowship. In fact, listen to these verses from the Gospel of Mark (3:13-15):

“And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons.”

1. Jesus called you so he can be with you. 

This sounds kind of crazy, but it is absolutely true. Jesus calls you so that he can be with you. He loves you. And those he loves he wants to be with. Don’t you long to be with those you love when you are apart? Doesn’t your heart ache and yearn to be reconnected to those in who you are apart from? This is how it is with Jesus. God said that Jesus, the Messiah, would be called Immanuel, that means “God with us.” And when he is with us we don’t have to guess.

People Jesus doesn’t want to be with he doesn’t call. Those whom he calls, he keeps calling. You can’t un-call yourself from being called by Jesus. He calls whom he wills. He wills whom he calls. Your first concern before doing the will of Jesus is to ask yourself “Am I with Jesus?” You need to be with Jesus before you try to do things for Jesus. The greatest rest and the greatest delight your soul can ever truly experience is to be in Christ Jesus, that is to be with him. It is invisible, but it is real. When you are with Jesus your soul both soars and sinks.

Your part of being with Jesus is to (a) repent to him of your sins & keep yourself from sin, (b) spend time with him in prayer, (c) thank him & praise him with your lips, (d) read his word, the Bible, (e) spend time with his people, the Church and (f) meditate & memorize his word throughout your day.  Ask yourself if you are really doing these things. This is a list of relationship builders with Jesus.

2. There is no self-appointment in Christ’s Kingdom.

There are too many Christians today who have not learned to listen to Jesus. Instead, they are listening to themselves. When you listen to yourself you learn to appoint yourself–you guess. You learn to pick what you desire and do what you desire. You attach the idea that what you are doing is good and most often you miss Christ entirely. See, Jesus calls those whom he desires, so that they will do what he desires.

When you join the military you do not get to pick your rank. You simply enlist. You then immediately belong to the military. You are given a rank. You are given a position and it doesn’t matter what you desire. Your job is to do what you are told to do. There is no self-appointment in the army. You don’t join at 18 or 19 years old and say, “Well, I think I’d like to be a general. This being a private or a lieutenant is for the birds. I’m tired of being told what to do. I’m ready to tell someone else what to do.” You simply are trained to say “Yes sir.” This is because you don’t appoint yourself.

The reason so many Christians are disappointed is that they are living in self-appointment.

Disappointment has a way of discouraging you or frustrating you. Christians should not live in discouragement or frustration. Discouragement is fertile soil for doubt. Doubt never produces the will of God. So if you are living in doubt, you will not be living in a place of fruitfulness for Christ. Frustration is simply soft anger. We don’t want to admit that we are angry, but we say that we are frustrated when really we are angry. Anger always has to be placed somewhere. We get angry most often when we don’t get our own way. A great sign of spiritual immaturity is to get angry when you don’t get your way.

3. Jesus doesn’t send you to places he hasn’t prepared for you.

Not once in the Bible can I find an instance where Jesus sent someone he called to do something he hadn’t prepared them for or the place for them. Jesus has to not only prepare the person he has to prepare the place. Don’t hear Jesus’s call and then try to do the work in your strength. But, this is exactly what is seen over and over again in the life of God’s people.

Jesus doesn’t send you anywhere he doesn’t go before you.

This is a wonderful, soul-securing truth of Scripture. Jesus does work we never see to produce fruit we can see. But, the problem for so many Christians is they go to places that Jesus didn’t call them to do work he didn’t prepare for them. To make matters worse, many Christians also don’t stay long enough to produce all that Christ has prepared for them. Jesus doesn’t call you to places he isn’t already working in. You may feel alone. You may not see many or any friends. But the work Jesus prepared for you is not dependent on how you feel or what friends you make. Sometimes, Jesus just wants you to depend on him and be with him. You have to learn that He is enough.

We are the products of Jesus Christ not the projects of Jesus Christ.

Christians are not projects, we are products. A project is planned enterprise with an uncertain outcome. A product is something that is made for a definite purpose. You are not Jesus’s project, you are Jesus’s product. He has made you to be with him, to look like him and to bear fruit like him. You are made for a specific purpose to accomplish a definite outcome. This means you can try anything, but you can only truly succeed in what you were made for.

Jesus doesn’t do bad work. Bad work comes from guess work.

Jesus is doing great work in you to do good work through you. The best work you will ever do is the work that Jesus prepared for you to do. The worst work you will do for Christ is the work you guessed he wanted you to do and you guessed wrong. It will feel like a good thing, but it will leave you empty. Good works have a fulfillment that guess works never do.

Be more concerned about the input than the outcome. Be more concerned with what you are putting into your relationship with Jesus than what you are producing out of it. So much of what we produce, we didn’t actually produce. He did. And then we take credit for it. Learn to love being with Jesus, because he loves to be with you. Then as you walk in him, he works through you. Your best work will always be to do that which he prepared for you to do–and that’s no guess!

 

(c) Alex Vann, 2018

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What Kills Your Calling

There is an element that if allowed to be loose in your life or your organization will absolutely kill your calling.

Well, kill may be too strong of a word. But this element will absolutely destroy, distract and delay you from fulfilling and walking in your calling. It will decrease your effectiveness so severely that one day you will look back and say, “How’d I get here?” or “How did this happen?” This element is deceptive, familiar and diabolical. This element that will disrupt, destroy and distract you from your calling is simply pride.

Do not think that even the littlest bit of pride is good.

Can the littlest bit of poison kill you? Can the tiniest germ make you sick?

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”

(Romans 12:3)

1. Pride is actually an unguarded and self-guided life.

Pride pushes you to say yes and conditions you to want to hear yes from others. Does a little child need to hear yes every time? Of course not. Why? Children are inherently selfish. They have to learn to share and learn to not get their way. This tells them, you are not the center of the universe. You are an important piece with a valuable purpose, but the world does not revolve around you. So, it is immaturity where we always want to hear yes. Maturity, which is impossible without humility, is where we learn to listen and be told no. Hearing no is good. A calling tells you “no, that is not for you” and “No, stay out of that.” A calling not only guides your life but it guards your life. An unguarded life will soon be a destroyed life.

Pride works to kill your guard and kill your guide.

Pride pushes you away from a “safe life” into dangerous living. Christians today must understand that it is dangerous to live and operate independently of Jesus Christ.  To think “with sober judgment” means to think under self-control. Self-control is a life that is guarded. Humility makes a great guard. It is absolute arrogance to think that you can accomplish, keep or maintain anything apart from the grace and goodness of our Lord Jesus Christ. You can’t be led by Jesus and led by your pride at the same time. Pride is sin. Pride always leads you to disgrace, downfall and destruction.

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.” (Proverbs 11:2)

2. Calling guards your life

Humility is a great guard. It is only in humility that we learn to say no. No to ourselves, no to our pride and no to others that would exploit our pride. When you let go your humility, you down your guard. There is only pride or humility. One will be active in your life. Both cannot. You are always either one or the other. Have you ever issued a half-hearted apology? It means half-your heart wasn’t really apologetic. There is no half-humility. It is either total or lacking. A vacuum of humility is always filled instantly and immediately with pride.

Humble people keep their calling

It takes humility to keep you in your your calling. It takes wisdom to walk in your calling. If Jesus has called you, then he will also equip and resource you to excel, thrive and execute that calling. A calling is a serious thing to Jesus. And Christians must take their calling as serious as they take anything in their lives. There are far too many Christians who are living far too comfortably and far too casually in light of their calling. It is pride that causes us to focus on ourselves, our wants and our pursuits. It is pride that pushes us away from our calling. The only way to keep from killing your calling is to stay humble and walk humble.

Pride causes your self to swell up like a balloon. A swollen self is useless in Christ’s kingdom. Humility is like a gentle pin prick that lets the air out of the balloon. Have you ever had your pride checked? It’s often more like a kick than a prick, but a humility check knocks the air out of you. Why? because you are too full of yourself.

Called to Spiritual Success not Worldly Success

Christian, you must never think for one second of one minute of one hour of one day that you are capable of living your life apart from Jesus Christ and experience any modicum of true spiritual success. You must first learn to value spiritual success over worldly success. Pride always pushes you toward the pursuit of worldly success. Spiritual success can only ever be discovered as you stay humble, as you go lower. If you experience worldly success, push it away from your heart. Don’t listen to the praise of the world. Humble yourself and praise Jesus.

Jesus didn’t show you your need for salvation, deliver you and then cut you loose to live however you want. He did all of that and simultaneously has called you to live a holy life, an obedient life, a life in service to others for him and a life that has been given an invitation that gives your life the deepest, most truest meaning you could ever gain. Every Christian has a calling, but not every Christian will live, discover and fulfill their calling. You can know Jesus and miss your calling. Pride is the #1 culprit that will cause you to miss the fulfillment of your calling.

What is a calling?

A calling is an invitation or a summons that once received has to be entered into. You must think about a calling as an irrevocable invitation. A calling is not something that you give yourself, because an invitation is not something you give yourself. In order to be invited, it has to come from another.

A calling is an invitation and every Christian has been given an invitation from Jesus Christ, but not every Christian will open that invitation. When you open your invitation, you are opening your life to your calling. A calling is not always understood perfectly at first, but what is understood is who called you. This means, who sent you the invitation. Pride will keep you from your calling, because pride keeps you from opening your invitation. Or pride keeps you from going back to your invitation once opened.

Let’s say you receive an invitation in the mail. The hand-writing looks familiar. But, you are busy and distracted, so you forget to open it. Some time later you look at the invitation and finally decide to open it. You only pull the invitation out of the envelope a fraction and then decide you don’t really want to read all of it, because if you read it, you then become responsible. This is pride. Why is this pride? Because pride says, “I know best.”  Pride keeps you from being all that you can be, because only as you live out your calling can you ever truly be all that Christ has called you to be.

3. Calling guides your life

Living in your invitation to follow Jesus keeps you from straying off course and staying on course. Every life, every family and every organization has a course. There is a humble track and a proud track. Lives, families and organizations that live on a proud track are headed for a humbling. This is why the mighty fall, they get on the wrong track. A Christian can live successfully on no other track than the one Christ has called them to. Pride pulls you of track. You must look back and see where you got on, where you were called. You must never forget who called you. You must never forget to whom you were called. You are never called by yourself to your self. If you are truly called, then you are called by Christ to others. He gives the assignment. He lays the track. Pride will cause you to get off track. The only way to get back on track is to look back to where Jesus called you and then humble yourself to go back there.

Once on track you can’t give it back. Kill your pride before it kills your calling.

 

(c) Alex Vann, 2018