Are you available for God's calling?

Amos - James Tissot

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Amos 7:1-17

TO CHEW ON: "Then Amos answered, and said to Amaziah:
'I was no prophet, nor was I the son of a prophet but I was a sheepherder and tender of sycamore fruit. Then the Lord took me as I followed the flock and the Lord said to me, "Go prophesy to My people Israel."'" Amos 7:14-15

Amos was on the defensive. Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, had reported him to King Jeroboam II because of his negative prophecies, no doubt hoping the king would expel Amos from the land. Amaziah himself ordered Amos off his religious turf: 'Go be a prophet—ply your trade—in your own land of Judah' he said (Amos 7:12,13).

(You may recall that worship at Bethel involved a golden calf that the first king Jeroboam set up when he wanted to keep the ten tribes of Israel from returning regularly to Judah to worship at the Jerusalem temple - 1 Kings 12:25-33. )

But Amos had complete confidence in his vocation. He was not a professional prophet, he told Amaziah. Rather he was a farmer. He is identified as "among the sheep breeders of Tekoa" (Amos 1:1). Here he tells Amaziah how the LORD gave him his assignment "…as I followed the flock. And the Lord said to me 'Go prophesy to My people Israel'" - Amos 7:15). Historians believe that his prophetic ministry (between 760 and 750 B.C.) was less than two years.

As I think of Amos, I wonder how aware and responsive we are to God's call. Would we be willing to switch careers if God called us to something different? Does God have our willingness for short assignments, or assignments of undetermined length?

Leslyn Musch advises well in her commentary on these verses:

"Be willing to receive and follow God's call regardless of your 'qualifications.' Training is vital to help you grow in your call and gifts but it is not a prerequisite to being called. Like Amos, respond to the Lord's call in faithfulness" - Leslyn Musch, Truth-In-Action Through Amos, New Spirit-Filled Life Bible, p. 1185.

PRAYER: Dear God, please help me to have ears tuned to Your voice and a heart to say 'yes' to whatever and wherever Your calling sends. Amen.

MORE: Ordinary vs. special calling

Os Guinness in his book The Call, speaks about a person's "ordinary calling" and "later special calling":

"…. A special calling refers to those tasks and missions laid on individuals through a direct, specific, supernatural communication from God. Ordinary calling, on the other hand, is the believer's sense of life-purpose and life-task in response to God's primary call, 'follow me,' even when there is no direct, specific, supernatural communication from God about a secondary calling.

In other words, ordinary calling can be seen in our responsibility to exercise a high degree of 'capitalist-style' enterprise about how we live our lives. For example, the servants in Jesus' parable of the talents and pounds were assessed according to how they 'got on with it' when the master was away. In this sense no follower of Christ is without a calling, for we all have an original calling even if we do not all have a later, special calling. And, of course, some people have both" - Os Guinness, The Call, pp. 48, 49 (emphasis added).

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The Holy Bible, New King James Version Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. - Used with permission.  

Your destiny—planned from eternity

"The Calling of St. Matthew" by James Tissot

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Ephesians 2:1-22

TO CHEW ON: "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

Os Guinness begins the introduction to his book The Call:

"Are you looking for purpose in life? For a purpose big enough to absorb every ounce of your attention, deep enough to plumb every mystery of your passions, and lasting enough to inspire you to your last breath?"

He goes on to outline the three main answers to the search for purpose we moderns consider:

• The Eastern answer: "If the final reality is an impersonal ground of being (the so-called 'undifferentiated impersonal') what is the purpose of life for each of us individuals? ... Forget it and forget yourself."

• The secularist answer: "If the final reality is chance and there is no God (or gods or the supernatural) to consider, then purpose is up to each of us to decide and achieve for ourselves by ourselves. We don't discover it—we decide it."

• The biblical answer: "From this perspective the final reality is neither chance nor an impersonal ground of being but an infinite personal God who has created us in his image and calls us into relationship with himself. Our life purpose therefore comes from two sources at once—who we are created to be and who we are called to be" - Os Guinness, The Call, pp. vii-ix (emphasis added).

This is what Paul is writing about to the Christians in Ephesus—this purposeful life. He tells them that God's specific purpose for each individual was planned in the mind of God "beforehand"—before we ever came to be. God formed us with it in mind. We are his "workmanship."

["Workmanship - poeima: The word suggests that which is manufactured, a product, a design produced by an artisan. Poiema emphasizes God as the Master Designer, the universe as His creation (Romans 1:20) and the redeemed believer as His new creation. (Ephesians 2:10). Before conversion our lives had no rhyme or reason. Conversion brought us balance, symmetry and order. We are God's poem, His work of art" - Dick Mills, Word Wealth, New Spirit-Filled Life Bible, p. 1647.]

I believe this intentionality on God's part not only encompasses who He formed us to be physically but when and where we were born, the family to which we belong, our strengths and weakness, the experiences we've gone through. They all work and are working to form us into the people that fit into a foreordained place in God's eternal plan and purpose for earth and the universe.

Let's embrace who God has made us and seek to put ourselves more and more at His disposal to perform those "good works" He prepared for us from eternity past (raise those kids, teach that class, work in that food bank, visit those sick, write that book, compose that song, build that house...).


PRAYER: Dear God, thank You that there are no accidents, no "Oops" moments with You. Help me to discover and live the destiny for which You have formed me. Amen.

MORE: "Follow Me"

"Are you open to the possibility that there is one who created you to be who you are and calls you to be who he alone knows you can be? Then listen to Jesus of Nazareth and his two words that changed the world—'Follow me'" - Os Guinness, The Call, p. ix (emphasis added).

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Who is your audience?

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Matthew 23:1-12

TO CHEW ON: " 'But all their works they do to be seen by men.' " Matthew 23:5


In his book The Call, Os Guinness tells a story about the American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and his mother. The Carnegies started out in Pittsburgh as a poor family. One day Andrew found his mother weeping in despair. Trying to console her, he said:

"Someday I'll be rich. We'll ride in a fine coach driven by four horses."

"That will do no good over here," his mother snorted, "if no one in Dunfermline (Scotland) can see us" - Os Guinness, The Call, p. 69.

Have you ever felt that way? What good is this accomplishment if  __x___ (my boss, my family, my Facebook friends, my colleagues, the people in my church, my city) don't see it?

Guinness says:

"Only madmen, geniuses, and supreme egoists do things purely for themselves. … Most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, do things with an eye to the approval of some audience or other. The question is not whether we have an audience but which audience we have" - Ibid, p. 70.

Here Jesus revealed to the crowds and the disciples who the audience of the sanctimonious scribes and Pharisees was: other people ("men"). The irony of this is that they posed their religious observances as done for God. But their actions—exaggerating the religious parts of their clothing (phylacteries and borders), loving the best places at feasts, insisting they be addressed as "Rabbi" demonstrated who they were really trying to impress.

I ask myself, who is my main audience? Whose opinion do I value most? What about you? If it's Jesus, as we say it is, then we will do the things that He values. Several of them are named here:

• Serve.

• Humble ourselves.

I love how Guinness concludes this chapter in his book:

"Do you wish to be inner-directed rather than other-directed and truly make one Audience decisive, the Audience of One? Listen to Jesus of Nazareth; answer His call" - Ibid p. 74.

PRAYER: Dear Jesus, how often I get distracted from living first and foremost for You, letting my thirst for the praise and attention of people dictate my actions. Help me to value Your opinion more than any person's so that my life will show that my audience truly is You.  Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Tested by circumstances - 1

"Naaman comes to see Elisha"
Illustrator of Henry Davenport Northrop's
'Treasures of the Bible' - 1894

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 2 Kings 5:1-14

TO CHEW ON: "But Naaman became furious, and went away and said, 'Indeed, I said to myself, "He will surely come out to me, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and heal the leprosy."'" 2 Kings 5:12.

One of the reasons stories fascinate us is because they contain conflict that reveals character. In Part 1 of the Naaman story, we see five main players. Their reactions to the conflict of a big problem—Naaman's leprosy—is interesting.

The unnamed slave girl, captured in a raid by the Syrians, didn't keep the good news of Elisha's healing power to herself. She could have thought, It serves my captor right that he is sick. But no, she told her mistress that healing was possible.

Israel's king saw the Syrian king's letter on behalf of Naaman as a threat. He interpreted Naaman's request for healing as a means of provoking war.

Naaman, the Syrian general, was quite willing to go for help. But he had ideas of how that help would come. His expectations weren't met. Elisha didn't even talk to him in person. The cure, to bathe in the muddy Jordan River, wounded his pride even more. He was offended and set off for home in a huff.

Naaman's servants cared about the well-being of their master and begged him to change his mind. They built up his faith and encouraged him to do what Elisha had said. They persuaded him to go to the Jordan where he took the seven-dip bath and received his healing.

Elisha the prophet had all the characteristics of someone living for God alone. He sent a message to the king, telling him to send Naaman to him. When Naaman came, Elisha directed his servant to speak to Naaman instead of going himself. Later, when Naaman wanted to reward him, he refused to take anything.

Do we see ourselves in any of these characters? What can we learn from them about facing our own conflicts or tests of circumstance?

1. The little servant girl teaches us to share God's goodness with our enemies as well as our friends. From her we learn that God's goodness is for all.

2.  Israel's king missed that and as a result lived in suspicion and fear. Like him, we need to realize that God is in every circumstance.

3. Naaman expected a little respect and some healing theatrics. From him we can learn that pride can get in the way of receiving from God.

4.  Naaman's servants showed themselves loyal friends as they bolstered his faith when he had little. We too need to remember that faith sometimes needs encouragement.

5.   Elisha's concern with pleasing his Boss—God—meant that ego-stroking (his own or his client's) and personal advancement played no part. He shows us what it looks like to live for the Audience of One.


PRAYER: Dear God, thank You that even bad circumstances can draw me closer to You. Help me to pass the circumstance tests I will face today. Amen.

MORE: The Audience of One

"The more one sees of life ... the more one feels, in order to keep from shipwreck, the necessity of steering by the Polar Star, i.e. in a word leave to God alone, and never pay attention to the favors or smiles of man; if He smiles on you, neither the smile or frown of men can affect you" - General Charles Gordon, quoted by Os Guinness in The Call.

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The Holy Bible, New King James Version Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. - Used with permission.

Cooperation, not competition

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

TO CHEW ON: "But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all." 1 Corinthians 12:7

We usually think of gifts in terms of how they will please us, how they will be of use to us, how they will enhance our ease or magnify our image. But spiritual gifts (also referred to here as manifestations, ministries and activities) are not like that. They are not primarily about us as individuals but about "all."

Who is this all? In one sense, it is the universal church—the worldwide body of believers who have entered the Kingdom of God or Heaven through being born again (see Jesus' explanation to Nicodemus in John 3:1-21).

But because we can't meaningfully live on such a vast plain, we connect our selves with local churches—smaller bodies of believers that we meet face to face, whom we know and who know us. It is mainly within the local church that our gifts are used, needed, and appreciated—or not.

There's the rub. For spiritual gifts don't all have equal prominence. But we mortals like prominence. And so here Paul's words hit the road of life when he reminds us, these gifts aren't about us, but about the good of "all."

We may never see the custodian who keeps the church shining and the garbage cans emptied, or the secretary who types and prints the bulletin, or the volunteer who puts the nursery worker schedule together, or the team that visits the sick in hospital, or the cooks and kitchen workers who prepare the Alpha meal. But if any of these, and a myriad others, fails in his or her job, don't we notice it!

So as we discover and use our spiritual gifts, let's remind ourselves:

• Our gift is not about our prominence.

• It's not about gaining a following.

• It's not about people's compliments and well dones.

• Rather, it's about faithfully doing our little under the head—Christ—and leaving the results with Him.

PRAYER: Dear God, I so easily forget the principle of spiritual gifts being for the profit of all. Help me to get my thinking out of the realm of competition, into the realm of cooperation. Amen.

MORE: Our corporate calling

"The call of Jesus is personal, but not purely individual; Jesus summons his followers not only to an individual calling but also to a corporate calling.

"... over against history's involuntary groupings, such as the tribe, the city-state, and the nation, there now stands a new community of God's called-out ones. These are bound together by a covenant and living out a corporate calling that both complements and transcends their calling as individuals" - Os Guinness, The Call, pp. 93, 97.

Called to Him

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Mark 3:7-19

TO CHEW ON: "And He went up on the mountain an called to Him those He Himself wanted. And they came to Him." Mark 3:13

Imagine being one of the chosen. After all the crowds from Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, behind Jordan, Tyre and Sidon had disbursed, to be left with Jesus. Imagine He calls you to join him on the mountainside because He Himself wants you as one of His band.

All through the Bible God we see God putting His hand of choice on the shoulders of specific people and groups of people.

• In the Old Testament He chose members of the tribe of Levi (Levites) as a substitute firstborn possession, to serve Him in worship (Numbers 3:12; 8:19).

• In Haggai's day He chose a Gentile king Zerubbabel to accomplish what He wanted done (Haggai 2:23).

• In Acts God told Ananias that the former murderer of Christians, Saul/Paul, was such a chosen one (Acts 9:15).

• And we, along with those who have read the Bible through the centuries find that He has chosen us. In the context of Jesus talking about Himself being the vine and those living in Him the branches, He says to disciples across the ages: "You did not choose Me but I chose you and appointed you..." John 15:16.

A little bit more about God's choosing:

• It is not on the basis of worldly wisdom, might or what is powerful and persuasive. Quite the opposite, according to 1 Corinthians 1:27, 28, 29.

• It is not so we can live an easy, charmed life. In our reading Jesus chose the disciples to prepare them to work as He did—preach, heal and cast out demons (Mark 3:14,15).

• In John 15:16 Jesus talks about bearing fruit and having prayer answered (implying we will have needs and lacks that require prayer).

Have you and I heard His call? Have we come to Him. Are we up on the mountain with Him, getting His instruction and power [exousia] for our assignments?


PRAYER: Dear Jesus, thank You for handpicking Your followers still. As Your word speaks to me, help me to be careful to listen so that I bear the fruit for which You called me. Amen.

MORE: Keeping work in balance

"Do we enjoy our work, love our work, virtually worship our work so that our devotion to Jesus is off-center? Do we put our emphasis on service, or usefulness, or being productive in working for God—at His expense? Do we strive to prove our own significance? To make a difference in the world? To carve our names in marble on the monuments of time?


The call of God blocks the path of all such deeply human tendencies. We are not primarily called to do something or go somewhere; we are called to Someone. We are not called first to special work but to God. The key to answering the call is to be devoted to no one and to nothing above God Himself. As (Oswald) Chambers said, 'The men and women Our Lord sends out on His enterprises are the ordinary human stuff, plus dominating devotion to Himself wrought by the Holy Spirit." The most frequent phrase in his writings: 'Be absolutely His'" - Os Guinness, The Call, pp. 41,42.

Illusion of the seen

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:15


TO CHEW ON: "... we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal." 2 Corinthians 4:18

You are no doubt familiar with optical illusions where your eyes see an object two ways. For example, there is a figure of a girl that rotates clockwise, and then counterclockwise. Or the black-and-white sketch (pictured) where your eye picks out a crone face with a hawk nose, or the profile of a young woman wearing a fancy hat.

Paul here is talking about the optical illusion of life, in that we can also view it two ways. There is the view that sees only the obvious, tangible, day-to-day stuff as real. And there is the view that sees the invisible things of eternity as real.

This eternal view is what we as followers of Jesus aspire to. It's the view that forgives one's enemies, is okay with being low instead of exalted, stores treasures in heaven, gives away one's coat to one's enemy, values and aspires to childlikeness (for lots more examples read Jesus' Sermon on the Mount—Matthew 5, 6,7).

Picking out the alternate picture in an optical illusion needs focus and concentration. So does living life from the perspective of eternity. As a sidebar article in my Bible explains it:

"We must learn that trials and difficulties will seem light and temporary when viewed from the perspective of the immeasurable glory that awaits us in eternity. We must learn to live by faith and not by what we can or cannot see with our natural eyes.... Set your focus and faith on unseen and eternal things. See the present from the perspective of the future. Look forward to God's great and eternal glory" - Leslyn Musch, New Spirit-Filled Life Bible, p. 1627 (emphasis added).

PRAYER: Dear God, thank You that this life isn't all there is. Help me to see the things and people around me with an eternal perspective.

MORE: Christian vision

"Christian vision ... is an act of imaginative seeing that combines the insight of faith, which goes to the heart of things below the surface, and the foresight of faith, which soars beyond the present with the power of a possible future. This combining of the not-yet-combined is the secret of visionary faith. Vision and reality, word and fulfillment, present and future, situation and possibility, restlessness and reaching out, anger at what is wrong and an aim for what is better—whatever the contrast between the pair, visionary faith is out to close the gap" - Os Guinness, The Call, p. 177.

Trio of the good life

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

TO CHEW ON: "We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God and Father." 1 Thessalonians 1:2-3

What an encouraging start to a letter! We all love to be told that we're making our leaders proud, that they're praying for us, that they've observed good qualities in us, and have noticed our spiritual progress.

The three things Paul names—his readers' work of faith, their labor of love, and their patience of hope—occur together in other places in the Bible. Note their appearance in

~ Romans 5:15

~ 1 Corinthians 13:13

~ Galatians 5:5-6

~ Colossians 1:4-5

~ Hebrews 10:22-24.

A commentary article in my Bible draws attention to the fact that these three things make up a large portion of Godly living:

"Godly living is characterized by a life lived to please God. Through Jesus' sacrifice we have already found favour in God's sight; therefore we are to live a life that reflects that favour. Like Jesus, our work is to flow from faith and love, honouring God in all that we do...


Understand that Godly living includes: 1] work that flows from faith, 2] labor that flows from love, and 3] patient endurance that flows from living hope" - Leslyn Musch, "Truth-In-Action Through 1 Thessalonians," New Spirit-Filled Life Bible, p. 1689 (emphasis added).

So as you and I go through the humdrum activities of this day, let's do those dishes, care for those babies, attend those meetings, work those jack hammers, coffee grinders, and cash registers with the awareness that our mundane jobs have big significance as we do them with faith, hope, and love before our appreciative Audience.


PRAYER: Dear God, please help me to link my ordinary activities, my labor and my leisure, with the knowledge that You see and approve...or prick me where You don't. Amen.


MORE: Audience of One

“Only madmen, geniuses, and supreme egotists do things purely for themselves. It is easy to buck a crowd, not too hard to march to a different drummer. But it is truly difficult–perhaps impossible–to march only to your own drumbeat. Most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, do things with an eye to the approval of some audience or other. The question is not whether we have an audience but which audience we have.

This observation underscores another vital feature of the truth of calling: A life lived listening to the decisive call of God is a life lived before one audience that trumps all others" – Os Guinness, The Call, p. 70