Replies

Freep mail me to be on or off the Daily Bread ping list

March 2, 2009

Finding Our Calling

ODB RADIO: Listen Now | Download
READ: Ephesians 4:1-16

I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. —Ephesians 4:1

A continuing struggle as we seek to follow Christ is trying to find our calling in life. While we often think in terms of occupation and location, perhaps a more important issue is one of character—the being that undergirds doing. “Lord, who do You want me to be?”

In Ephesians 4, Paul wrote, “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called” (v.1). He followed this with three “be’s,” as one translation renders it: be humble, be gentle, be patient, “bearing with one another in love” (v.2 NIV). Paul wrote this from prison, a difficult place where he continued to live out his calling from God.

Oswald Chambers said: “Consecration is not the giving over of the calling in life to God, but the separation from all other callings and the giving over of ourselves to God, letting His providence place us where He will—in business, or law, or science; in workshop, in politics, or in drudgery. We are to be there working according to the laws and principles of the Kingdom of God.”

When we are the right people before God, we can do whatever task He sends, wherever He puts us. In so doing, we discover and affirm His calling for us.

You are called with a holy calling
The light of the world to be;
To lift up the lamp of the gospel
That others the light may see. —Anon.

It’s not what you do but who you are that’s most important.

Bible in One Year: Numbers 26-27; Mark 8:1-21