God’s Call to Love
A Topical Sermon

At the first of this year, Broadway began an emphasis which was expressed with the phrase, "Answering God’s Call." That emphasis was promoted through a series of three worship assemblies focused upon our calling from God. The first assembly in that series was on January the tenth, and I began the relevant sermon with a story which I want to repeat this morning. The story was told by the Christian writer, Os Guinness, in his 1998 book entitled, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life. The story concerns a speech given by a wealthy businessman. Please listen again to Guinness’s report of that speech:

‘As you know, I have been very fortunate in my career and I’ve made a lot of money––far more than I ever dreamed of, far more than I could ever spend, far more than my family needs.’ The speaker was a prominent businessman at a conference near Oxford University. The strength of his determination and character showed in his face, but a moment’s hesitation betrayed deeper emotions hidden behind the outward intensity. A single tear rolled slowly down his well-tanned cheek.

[The speaker continued]. ‘To be honest, one of my motives for making so much money was simple––to have the money to hire people to do what I don’t like doing. But there’s one thing I’ve never been able to hire anyone to do for me: find my own sense of purpose and fulfillment. I’d give anything to discover that’ (p 1).

Please feel this man’s pain. Feel his hunger to discover "sense of purpose and fulfillment." After telling that same story nine months ago, I said, "sisters and brothers, we have been taken hold of by God and we have an exciting and galvanizing purpose. We know why we are here. We are here to give God glory."

I still believe that as passionately now as I did then. I still believe that the primary answer to the hunger expressed by this wealthy businessman is that we are here to give glory to God, the Creator who gave us life. But so often believers feel distant from that lofty purpose, and it is that sense of distance between a believer’s reality and a believer’s dream that we have addressed this year through our emphasis on Answering God’s Call.

One of the reasons for that sense of distance is that the Church has not well communicated God’s desire to be active in our lives, our everyday lives. God desires to lead us, shape us, and use us for a meaningful purpose from Sunday through Saturday. And one of the ways that the Bible conveys that truth is through its teaching on calling. Most of us know that the Bible is full of examples of God calling persons into a meaningful role for the purpose of participating in the will of God. I used to thank that the sole purpose of those calling stories in the Bible was to let us know how special those specific individuals were––individuals like Abraham, Moses, Samuel, and the prophets. But the New Testament makes very clear that all Christians are called. In fact, phrases like "the called" and "those who are called" are frequently used to refer collectively to Christians. In fact, you may be surprised to learn that the term, "Christian" or "Christians," the term we most use today for the disciples of Christ, is only used three times in the entire New Testament. I have not counted how many times some form of the term "call" is used to designate the followers of Christ, but it is much more than three times. I will note just a few examples. In Rom 1:6, Paul refers to the Christians in Rome as those "who are called to belong to Jesus Christ," and in the very next verse he refers to them as those "who are called to be saints." In 1 Cor 1:2 Paul refers to the Christians in Corinth in much the same way when he addresses that letter "To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints . . . ." And just a few verses later, in 1 Cor 1:23-24 Paul says, "we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." In Heb 3:1, the recipients of that letter are referred to as "holy partners in a heavenly calling." The New Testament letter written by Jude is addressed "To those who are called" (Jude 1:1). And in 2 Pet 1:3 Peter refers to the reality of the Christian’s calling when he refers to God as the one "who called us by his own glory and goodness." Be reminded also of a statement made in the passage used as our Scripture reading this morning. That reading was taken from 2 Timothy 1:8-12, and in v 9 Paul says that God "saved us and called us with a holy calling." Many more examples could be given, but surely we can all see that Christians have received a calling from God. The New Testament is certain about that.

But not only have Christians been called by God. We have also been gifted by God. We have been called and gifted just like the faith heroes of the Old Testament. The New Testament has several passages that refer to the gifts that God gives the called according to God’s will. Let’s look at just one passage, because I think we have done a better job of communicating this truth. The passage I want to note is in 1 Cor 12:4-7. There Paul writes,

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Christians have been endowed with gifts by the Holy Spirit of God.

So God both calls us and endows us with spiritual gifts. We take for granted that Moses was called by God and given special gifts and powers to fulfill his assigned role in God’s plan. We take for granted that the prophets experienced the same type of calling and gifting for service. It seems to me that these same realities which we take for granted relative to the great faith heroes of the past are also realities for all persons who have been saved by Jesus Christ. We have been called, and we have been gifted. The New Testament’s teaching is clear.

So why do so many Christians feel distant from that sense of divine purpose and meaning flowing through their lives? If we have been called and if we have been gifted, why do we so often not feel any divine activity taking place in or through our day-to-day lives?

I think there are many reasons, but I want to address just one because I think it is a particularly common one and because I did not address this reason in the sermon series earlier in the year. I think one of the reasons we fail to experience the joy of God’s active purpose flowing through our lives is because we fail to bring the reality of God’s calling into our lives no matter the nature of our everyday lives.

In our earlier series on calling, I placed a lot of emphasis on finding God’s calling for your life and pursuing that calling. I emphasized the need to take stock of the gifts God has given you and of the high-minded passions God has placed within your heart as the two primary indicators of your calling. I still believe that. But I also have come to believe something else as I have thought more about this issue of calling. I have come to believe that we often do not see that the lives we live right now and the opportunities we have right now are ideally suited for living out our calling, for fully utilizing our gifts. We are far too prone to think that if I had another job or if I lived somewhere else or if my family were different I could live out God’s calling. I even think back to that earlier sermon series and suspect that I said things that unintentionally fed that perception. Let me assure that such is not the view of the New Testament. The New Testament’s view of calling could be summarized in the somewhat hackneyed phrase, "bloom where you’re planted."

Please take your Bible and turn to 1 Cor 7:17-24 and follow along as I read. There Paul says,

However that may be, let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but obeying the commandments of God is everything. Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called.

Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present condition now more than ever. For whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of human masters. In whatever condition you were called, brothers and sisters, there remain with God.

How could it be clearer? Paul says, that if you were called in this situation or that, do not try to change it. You can live out your calling as circumcised and as uncircumcised, as a slave and as a freed person. If a slave is granted freedom, that is fine; but even life as a slave can serve divine calling.

Some of you may remember that one of the sources for my original focus on calling was the magazine called Life@Work. I received the most recent issue of that magazine this week, the issue dated November/December 1999. One of the articles in this issue was written by James H. Blanchard. Blanchard is chairman and CEO of Synovus Financial Corp. in Columbus, GA. His company was named "The Best Company to work for in America" for 1999 by Fortune Magazine. It employs about 10,000 people in its network of 36 southeastern banks and Total System Services Inc. Blanchard begins his article by telling a story concerning a member of his company’s founding family named Bill Turner. It seems that Bill was being interviewed by a reporter.

After many questions and answers, the reporter still didn’t comprehend the "culture of the heart" that sets Synovus apart.

"Listen," Mr. Turner finally said, "you obviously don’t want to hear this. Or maybe you think it’s a disguise for something else. But our company’s culture is really all about love––open, sincere, unconditional love" (p 6).

In the hurly-burly of the business world someone responded to a calling to love, and to build a company around love. When an earth-shaking notion, to build a company like God builds the church. That company is flourishing and is "flooded with hundreds of [job] applicants every week" (Ibid).

Richard Nelson Bolles is the author of the book, What Color Is Your Parachute. This is a book designed to help people find their "job fit." The book is so popular that Bolles has updated it annually for almost thirty years. There are more than six million copies in print (Life@Work, August 1998, p 22). Bolles is Christian and a great proponent of divine calling with regard to a person’s life choices. One of his favorite examples of a person who found her calling is told in another issue of the magazine Life@Work. Let me tell you the story as it is reported by Life@Work.

"That’s how I heard about the woman at Safeway," [Bolles] said. I’ve never met her. I just read about her years ago."

This woman had found her calling, and she became a heroine to Bolles––an example to use when explaining what calling "looks like." It had nothing to do with what she and everything to do with how she did it.

"She worked in the days when there were cash registers rather than bar code readers, and she would get a rhythm going on the keys of the cash register when she was ringing stuff up," he said. "Then she would challenge herself on how she packed the paper bag with the groceries."

She gave recipes to shoppers who weren’t sure how to cook what they were buying. She kept candy for kids and, with permission from the parent, would give it out.

She did the work of a checker, which 10,000 people can do, but she did it in her own unique way," said Bolles. She performed all of these different roles under the guise of ‘just’ being a checker. That’s a basic way that calling gets or should get traced out: Taking mundane tasks and figuring out how to transfigure them" (Life@Work, August 1998, p 24).

That story expresses for me something essential to the biblical view of calling. We bring our sense of divine calling and our spiritual gifts to whatever we do. We employ that calling and those gifts to "transfigure" whatever we do. We transfigure/transform everything we are involved in with love. We transfigure/transform everything we are involved in to the glory of God.

We are all called to love. Whatever our job, whatever our gifts, whatever the precise nature of our individual calling we are all called to love. Discover your calling. Employ your spiritual gifts. And transfigure/transform your work place, your family, and your overall life context to the glory of God.