We have been looking at vocation or God’s call from the perspective of the corporate body of the church. Now I want us to return to the sense of vocation of the individual. What is your sense of God’s call in your life? How does that sense of God’s call affect how you make choices within the ministry? If you sincerely believe that God is calling you into ministry, do you also relate that to your position in a particular ministry? If you are a pastor of a church, how does believing that God has called you to this church affect how you respond to the conditions of the church and your employment there?
As you reflect on those questions, it is valuable to reflect on God’s call as depicted in the biblical stories. Remember that God’s call did not always mean success in a worldly sense. What does it mean that God might have called you to a particular church but that church is not thriving? Can you think of a biblical example of God having called someone and in following that call, that person experienced resistance and even rejection? In knowing that, how does that affect your response to challenges within your pastorate? (See Isaiah 6 for example) Are there times when you feel inadequate to the task before you? How does God’s response to Jeremiah’s sense of inadequacy speak to your situation? (Jeremiah 1ff) Try to find other biblical stories that offer you a helpful parallel to examine you situation.
As you look at your particular situation, if God is calling you in that context, what might God be saying to you? Try to write at least five responses to that question. Sometimes God calls a person to new situations but sometimes God calls for a deeper response in the same situation. How does it feel for you?
If you can hold on to the strong sense of God’s call in your life, how does it affect how you respond to the challenge before you?
