The Morning Edition by Scott Anderson
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Proving Our Calling
2 Peter 1:3-9
Many followers of
Christ walk through this life feeling very frustrated by their
ineffectiveness , their lack of desire to either really serve God or to
know Him, their attraction to the corrupt things of this world, and
their caving into temptations. And whether they’ve just received Christ
as Savior, or have been saved for years, if certain practices are not
applied to their walks of faith, a pattern starts to emerge. Temptation,
failure, conviction, sorrow, repentance…this repeats itself until a
believer becomes so frustrated, tired, and discouraged that any other
life looks more desirable, than trying to live for God. Couple that with
the distractions of everyday life here, and some begin to believe that
their faith in Jesus is either not relevant in the real world or doesn’t
work .
We were never meant to live the Christian life on our
own….
Peter states in his 2nd letter…”His (God’s) divine
power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our
knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”….(2 Peter
1:3).
Now, most of us pay lip service to scriptures like that. We say that we
believe God is the answer to life’s questions. And we may have seen
God’s merciful hand at work in some circumstances. But our memories are
short, and our old nature and the flesh are corrupt, and as time goes
by, deep down we begin to doubt and our actions may not line up with
that.
Peter gives us some practices that we must put into
play. We must be “partakers of the divine nature in order to escape the
corruption in the world caused by evil desires“….(2 Peter 1:4). Now if
we’ve accepted Christ as our savior, we’ve been given his divine nature.
But we must apply or participate with that divine nature to obtain a
victorious life in Christ. Peter elaborates on participating in verses 5
and 6.…
…”For this reason, make every effort to add to your
faith…goodness ( moral excellence), knowledge (spiritual knowledge
focused on God and his word), self control, perseverance, godliness,
brotherly kindness, and love. For if you possess these qualities in
increasing measure….they will KEEP YOU from being ineffective and
unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ”…..
These qualities can only come from God’s divine nature.
They are also the “fruit of the Spirit”. Adding these to our faith is
nothing more or less than submitting to the control of the Holy Spirit.
He enables us to be partakers in his divine nature and He is then
revealed in us. This is proving our calling and our salvation.
But there is an alternative. If we don’t do this, we
prove verse 9. We become nearsighted (looking inward and thinking of
ourselves only), and blind. Then comes drifting and a forgetting of what
was done for us at the cross. We’ll forget who we are and whose we are.
Let us apply these practices daily . They will keep us
from falling and wandering, and will prove our calling
Waiting
There is perhaps
no period that is more frustrating, more troubling , more confusing and
yet more worthwhile, than when our Father asks us to wait…or even still,
when He makes us wait.
We all know the feeling. When God gives us a call. A desire
is birthed within us to answer that call, to serve with joy and power.
Spiritual gifts are given to be used and we ‘re excited about using
them. Opportunities for natural talents to be used arise (musical
abilities, acting, writing, cooking ,etc…). We invest time, energy,
finances, dreams, training. We pray . We know what God has for us and
what He’s calling us to do. We position ourselves to run the race marked
out for us. And then….as we’re getting geared up, or even after we’ve
gotten into this thing…everything seemingly stops. There are walls where
there should be clear paths. You feel like you’re in a rowboat in the
ocean with no discernable direction. The train is just sitting on the
tracks. Almost everyone I know who God has placed in service for Him has
experienced this. Some have experienced this on a regular basis.
Why would God give us desires to do something, or be
something, call us, equip us and then seemingly shelve us? Why would God
allow us to go so far and then let us sit in the Waiting Room? Before we
look at this, we need to remember one thing. If we are believers in
Christ, we gave our lives to Christ. The lives we live are not ours any
longer. In 1 Corinthians 6:19, Paul says our lives are not our own…we’ve
been bought with a price…With that revelation comes this truth…the
Potter gets to and has to shape the pottery. He’s more interested in
holiness for us, not our happiness, and conformity over our comfort
Abraham waited decades to have a God promised child. Joseph
had a prophetic dream and then was sold into slavery for years and
became a prison inmate, before seeing God’s promise fulfilled. Moses ran
away from Egypt after rescuing a Hebrew slave and spent the most
productive years of the rest of his life as a shepherd before God used
him as Israel’s deliverer. Paul the apostle knew that God had called him
to be a preacher, and yet he had to spend almost two decades on the back
burner before God used him for the task he had called him to…as the
evangelist to the Gentiles and to write most of the New Testament. The
list goes on. A quick note here…study the stories of these God called
men and see a pattern. They all tried to answer God’s call on their own.
In their zeal, and sometimes in their arrogance, they impatiently tried
to help God out. Usually that made things worse. Another note…they all
learned to occupy where they were, serving as they could with what they
had. God brought them all out of the Waiting Room and into some wide
open living. They learned that life is about Him.
God knows our desires to serve and I believe He rejoices in
our wanting to serve in the family business. But there are distinct
reasons why God sometimes stops us for a season. And though we may not
see those reasons or understand them, our sovereign Father is still in
control of the situation. After all, we exist as new creations because
of Him and for Him and by Him. He has the right to get some things right
in us. And, if we are going to represent Him in some capacity, whether
in the arts, or in ministry or whatever, as His ambassadors we have to
be in the place He wants us to be. Spiritually, relationally, mentally,
experientially. Sometimes that requires a little molding, pruning,
shaping, sifting, and just more growth on our part. And sometimes God
just wants to teach us to listen to Him. He wants to get our attention.
So that we can get on the road with Him. Sometimes we have to wait for
Him to remove roadblocks and traps out of our path.
In John 15, Jesus says that we are branches attached to the
Vine and that His Father is the Gardener who prunes us, getting rid of
the dead stuff so that real fruit can grow. In Romans 9, Paul says that
God is a Potter who molds and shapes clay. These events make us into the
likeness of Christ. And they may not make sense to us at all. In Luke
22, Jesus even says that sometimes Satan may get permission to sift us
like wheat (don’t fret…God uses Satan as a tool for our good. It’s God
who ultimately is doing the sifting). This usually happens to get our
motives right.
We need to remember who we are, Who we serve, remember the
vision He has given us and just occupy and abide during these times. We
too will come out of the Waiting Room, changed and usable and even
blessed .
More on waiting, and God’s purposes in our next devotional…..
Waiting is Yielding
When God
asks us to wait on Him, He is asking us to yield to Him. Waiting on God
is yielding to God. Conversely, yielding to God means waiting on God.
And whether it’s waiting a span of time for something
God has promised, or intimate waiting in His presence, yielding and
submitting to Him goes hand in hand with that waiting. Because when we
wait upon the Lord, we are acknowledging His sovereign Lordship over us
and the circumstances of our lives, and we are saying to Him that His
will is more important than our wills. Waiting says that we care more
about His purpose and a relationship with Him, than our own plans. And
we are saying that He knows best.
God really does have plans and purposes for us. Good
plans that further the Kingdom, make us closer with Him, reveal His love
for us to us in a greater way, and bring fulfillment to us, and may have
big impacts on other people. However those plans are conditional. And we
won’t see those plans fulfilled unless we are submitting, yielding, and
obeying where we are. More about that later…
The Apostle Paul’s life and ministry, is a great study
in God’s personal dealings with one of His people. And perhaps one of
the best lessons on waiting on God in the whole Bible. In Paul’s story
we see a call that’s given, a believer trying to force that call along,
a failure, an intimate relationship with God that could not have existed
without some down time, and that promised call being fulfilled in God’s
time. And we all reap the benefits of Paul’s experience.
Paul was one of the youngest of the Pharisees, a kind
of supreme court of it’s day. Legal eagles who governed much of the life
of everyday Jews. Paul had a great upbringing. Born into a family of
Roman citizenship, into a family from the tribe of Benjamin, one of the
more notable tribes of Israel, taught the Law at an early age by one of
the leading Jewish scholars, and had a budding career going. Now being a
Jew of Jews who had an immense respect for God, his heritage and the
Law, he sincerely saw this new offshoot religion called Christianity as
a heresy. One that challenged the system that should not be challenged.
So Paul went to Damascus, Syria to arrest Christians who were there to
bring them back for prosecution….and perhaps execution. Here’s where God
makes Himself known, and where Paul’s new life, a life of waiting and
yielding begins. These accounts are found in the book of Acts and in the
book of Galatians.
As Paul (known as Saul, his Jewish name) is about to
enter Damascus, the resurrected Jesus comes as a bright light, stops him
in his tracks, reveals Himself to Paul in a dramatic fashion, blinds him
and sends them onto Damascus (understand this….God will use trauma to
get our attention or to mold us, or to move us along). In Damascus, God
tells a Christian named Ananias that Paul has been chosen to be the
messenger to the Gentiles as well as the people of Israel and that he
would also suffer much for the name of Christ. So Paul has received a
pretty intense call. This seems like pretty big stuff. He’s going to be
used of the Lord in a huge way….someday.
So Paul gets healed and baptized and starts using his
training in the Jewish scriptures to prove that Jesus is the promised
Messiah by preaching in the synagogues. After all, he has a call on his
life now. No one gets saved. Just a lot of ticked of Jews. So Paul
leaves Damascus with no place to go. He takes a trip to Arabia and
vanishes off the radar screen. Here he probably gets some one on one
time with the Holy Spirit which helps develop our New Testament
theology. But he also as to work, eat, sleep, and deal with people. He
learns and occupies. Then he goes back to Damascus and then to Jerusalem
to try to join the Apostles. After all, he has a call on his life and
he’s ready. But the Apostles are a bit cautious. They remember a
persecutor, and they weren’t there when Paul saw the bright light.
Finally Barnabas, James and Peter accept him. He’s in….for 15 days. His
preaching ticks off the Jews and perhaps sets the cause back . The
disciples take him down to the docks and put him on a ship and tell him
to go home, back to Tarsus.
14 years later we hear about Paul again. 14 years
before God says it’s time for the promised call to be fulfilled. But
look what happened during those 14 years. Paul went home and grew as a
Christian. He develops a deeper relationship with God. He learned how to
submit to God’ leading. He learned to hear God’s voice. He unlearned
some prejudices he had about non Jews (you can’t be the messenger to the
Gentiles if you consider them to be uncircumcised dogs) and he developed
a preaching style by working
where he was with what he had to work with. He eventually began going to
established churches in Syria and Cilicia and serving them. And while he
did those things God was moving other things around. Christians had fled
Jerusalem and began taking the message of Jesus all over the place. Some
Gentiles in a city called Antioch began responding to that message.
Barnabas went there to start a church. He needed help. And God reminded
him of a guy who felt somewhat forgotten…. Paul. Barnabas went and
invited him to help. And Paul’s promised call began. He was now a
minister to the Gentiles. And this lead to 3 missionary trips to the
Gentiles.
Paul heard from God in a direct manner. He received a
promise from God. He also found out that God doesn’t rush to fit our
plans. He found out that waiting is yielding. In private times before
the Lord and over periods of time. Occupying where we are, still
yielding, learning, obeying in the small stuff.
More about waiting in the next devotional.