Calling is the most comprehensive reorientation and the most profound motivation in human experience.
Os Guiness, author of The Call
Strong words. Why would someone feel compelled to elevate the matter of calling to the status of a personal imperative, something necessary? After all, doesn’t life go on the way it always has even if we give no credence to calling?
Yes, it does–and therein lies our dilemma. You can either drift aimlessly through this one-chance-only gift of life or faithfully live your calling, that purpose for which you were created. And if I may be so bold, I suggest that the pursuit of calling includes, as part of its reward, a bounty of joy and satisfaction. This is not to say that realizing one’s purpose cancels out life’s challenges. Hardly! In fact, the pursuit of calling is fraught with opposition. Yet calling’s trials are not without benefit for they are fertilizer by which Christ-likeness is nourished.
Where there is a calling there must be, by very definition, a Caller, the God who created you. In bringing men and women into existence God bestows upon us an amazing gift: we bear his image, his likeness. God, who is purposeful in everything he does, calls us to a life of purpose, a life where each person is given a role that only he or she can fulfill. Although the discernment of, and the living of our calling proves a lifelong undertaking it is a welcome necessity, the only acceptable response to our heavenly Father’s redeeming, foundational call to all humanity given through his Son, Jesus Christ, when he says, “Follow me.”
Once set in motion, faith longs for intimacy. An unbroken connection. A vibrant, consuming, adventure-filled relationship. A relationship joining us in holy partnership with Jesus, the incarnate God, as he goes about his Father’s business. Our business now, too.
Having answered the primary call to follow, Jesus continues the intensely personal dialog throughout our life, leading us into the good work he has uniquely prepared for each of us to do. Our role in the history of his world. The fact there exists such a role for us—not just “us” in the collective sense of the word but for each individual male and female child of the living God, is what makes discovering and living our calling an imperative.
Michael
Does calling play the definitive role in your life it should?