“The only way I can begin to fulfill the call of God is by keeping my convictions out of the way, my convictions as to what I imagine I am fitted for. The fitting goes much deeper down than one’s natural equipping…
We try to make calls of our own spiritual consecration, but when we are put right with God, He blights all our sentimental convictions and devotional calls. He brushes them all aside, and rivets us with a passion that is terrific to one thing we had never dreamed of, and in the condition of real communion with God, we overhear Him saying: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?”
And for one radiant, flashing moment we see what God wants, and say in conscious freedom,
‘Here am I! Send me.”
– So I Send You, Recognizing and Answering God’s Call to Service
by Oswald Chambers
What a journey it has been.
Not merely in a journey of geographical distance, or time even, but a journey of personal growing in God.
Who would have thought that when the opportunity to serve in Uganda presented itself, all my thoughts were filled with resistance and defense: I don’t want to go there, it’s not what I imagined missions should be. What about this and that opportunity? They look more like what I think I should be doing.
The truth was, I had a fixed and narrow idea of what my call from God looked like, and was convicted as to what I was fitted for. I wanted to work with children in a rural setting, and knowing that this opportunity in Uganda would involve working more with adults, and less in an orphanage setting, I was not keen.
Looking back, I am grateful God intervened on several occasions by calling, calling, and calling me still, in spite of my obstinacy.
“ The call of God is the call according to the nature of God. Where we go in obedience to that call depends entirely on the providential circumstances which God engineers. The call of God is not a call to any particular service, although my interpretation of the call may be; the call to service is the echo of my identification with God. My contact with the nature of God has made me realize what I can do for God. Service is the outcome of what is fitted to my nature. God’s call is fitted to His nature, and I never hear His call until I have received His nature. When I have received His nature, then His nature and mine work together; the Son of God reveals Himself in me, and I, in my natural life, serve the Son of God in ordinary ways, out of sheer downright devotion to Him.
The call to service is the result of my obedience to the realized call of God. Profoundly speaking, there is no call to service for God; it is my own actual “bit”, the overflow of super abounding devotion to God. God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him; He brings me into a relationship with Himself wherein I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love to Him. To serve God is the deliberate love gift of a nature that has heard the call of God.
When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realize what they can do for God.
Their natural fitting for service and the call of God is identified as one in them.”
It was only when we decided to bite the bullet to decide on Uganda, that the opportunity to work in a public health setting presented itself to me. And when I received the job descriptions of what they would have me do as a volunteer, it started me to the depths of my core, to see how my work in the past 2 years at my previous job, had trained me and fitted me perfectly to the gap they so needed to be filled.
I had my own ideas. I wanted to teach and look after underprivileged children. But God had other plans. And it amazes me, day after day, how naturally fitted I am to this role I have been given. We have only been here for less than 2 weeks, and already, I have been given a simple office, passionate Ugandan colleagues, and a quickly-filled up schedule to be involved in the community-transforming work that lies ahead.
I am learning, that it is not I who decides on the nature of my call. It is God who calls, and when we, in obedience, respond to that somewhat-fuzzy beckoning to what we generically term a “call”, we shall find that God has something divinely ordained set apart for us to do.
“The sense of the heroic appeals readily to (us)… (But) the scrutiny of God’s words bring the tide of enthusiasm suddenly to the test…
Along with the sense of the heroic there is a base element of selfishness, a lurking desire to fix the scene of our own martyrdom. We feel if only we could fix the scene of our own martyrdom. We feel if only we could fix the place and the spectators, we could go all lengths. But God fixes the place…
No enthusiasm for humanity will ever stand the strain that God will put on His workers. Only one thing will stand the strain, and that is the personal relationship to Jesus of a man or woman who has gone through the mill of God’s spring cleaning until there is one purpose only:
‘I am here for God to use me as He wills.’”
It all sounds very perfect, except that when you get to the place where you are called, you find yourself riddled with little frustrations which vex and tire you out.
Days after I arrived, problems with where we stayed surfaced. Night after night, loud bass music rings from the valleys to the skies, from 10pm to 3 or 4am in the early mornings, frustrating us. After a few days of this, some other tenants moved in next door, bringing the loud bass music right to our doorstep. One early morning at 2am, having been awakened by the bass music again, and stressed out by the numerous adjustments from settling in and some unexpected visa issues, I crumbled in tears, not knowing what else to do.
It was then, that the above made sense to me.
It always seems heroic to do missions for God in a foreign land. But when push comes to shove, it is the day to day strains of reality and the accumulative vexations of life in a different land that will prove the fire of one’s call. I keep thinking, “God, if only the noise wasn’t so bad… If only they didn’t mess up my visa… if only…” Today, after looking after Cliff for a week from a tummy bug he caught, I find myself being the one having the runs. It is when one is ill and weak that one misses the comforts of home the most, and the familiar tastes of home-cooked food.
But God fixes the place and scene of us dying to ourselves, not us.
“ We are apt to forget the mystic, supernatural touch of God which comes with His call. If a person can tell you how the call of God came and all about it, it is questionable whether he or she ever had the call. The call to be a professional may come in that explicit way, but the call of God is much more supernatural… in whatever way it comes, it comes with the undercurrent of the supernatural, almost the uncanny.
It is always accompanied with a glow- something that cannot be put into words.
We need to keep the atmosphere of our minds prepared by the Holy Spirit, lest we forget the surprise of the touch of God on our lives. “
Are you struggling to discern God’s call for your life?
Perhaps you, like me, are stubborn and convicted by your own beliefs and ideas of what your calling should look like too.
But stay obedient and sensitive to His calling, and you shall discover Him wrecking all your pre-conceived ideas about servitude, and come into a place of total helplessness, and awe at His wondrous ways of working all things good for His purposes and plans.
“If we are not in full conscious allegiance to our Lord it has nothing to do with our personal salvation, but with this broken bread and poured out wine aspect of life. God can never make me wine if I object to the fingers He uses to crush me….
I must never choose the scene of my own martyrdom, not must I choose the things God will use in order to make me broken bread and poured out wine. His own Son did not choose. We say, ‘ I want angels; I want people better than myself; I want everything to be significantly from God, otherwise I cannot live the life, or do the thing properly; I always want to be gilt-edged.’
Let God do as He likes.
If you are ever going to be wine to drink, you must be crushed. Grapes cannot be drunk; grapes are only wine when they have been crushed. I wonder what kind of coarse finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped? You are not ripe yet, and if God squeezed you, the wine that came out would have been remarkably bitter. Let God go on with His crushing, because it will work His purpose in the end…
God puts us though discipline not for our own sakes, but for the sake of His purpose and His call. Never debate about anything God is putting you through, and never try to find out why you are going through it. Keep right with God and let Him do what He likes in your circumstances and you will find He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will be a benefit to others.”
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So I Send You, Recognizing and Answering God’s Call to Service
by Oswald Chambers