God-Sized Calling!

[extracts from IF YOU WANT TO WALK ON WATER, YOU'VE GOT TO STEP OUT OF THE BOAT]

A calling is something you discover, not something you choose. The word vocation comes from the Latin word for voice. Discovering it involves very careful listening. The whole idea of calling is that there is a Call-er and a call-ee.

You are I are the call-ees and God is the Call-er. God equips the worker and assigns the work.

Frederick Buechner wrote that calling is "the place where your deep gladness meets the word's deep need." It is not heard to figure out were the world's deep need is. It is everywhere! What turns out to be more difficult than you might expect is discovering where your deep galdness lies. What work bring syou job? For what do you have desire and passion - for these, too, are gifts from God. This is why giftedness i about more than just talents - it includes passion. As Arthur Miller says, "It's the lifeblood of a person, the song that her heart longs to sing, the race that his legs were born to run... There's an electricity associated with giftedness. Give a person the chance, and he'll jolt you."

That does not mean that following a calling always brings feelings of enjoyment. Often it means the gritty resolution to bear with a hard task when it would be easier to quit. But even this yields a certain satisfaction when I know I have been skilled and fitted by God for the task. But I must be ruthlessly honest about my deep gladness.

People sometimes romanticize the notion of vocation. Receiving a calling from God is not the same thing as falling into your dream career. A dream career generally promises wealth, power, status, security, and great benefits. A calling is often a different story.

As a rule, the people (e.g. Moses, Jonah, Jeremiah) whom we read about in Scripture who were called by God felt quite inadequate. When God called Abraham to leave home, or Gideon to lead an army, or Esther to defy the king, or Mary to give birth to the Messiah, their initial response was never: Yes, I'm up to that challenge. I think I can handle that.

The first response to a God-sized calling is generally fear. Henry Blackaby writes,

Some people say, "God will never ask me to do something I can't do. I have come to the place in my life that, if the assignment I sense God is giving me is soemthing that I know I can handle, I know it is probably not from God. The kind of assignments God gives in the Bible are always God-sized. They are always behyond what people can do, because He wants to demonstrate His nature, His strenght, His provision and His kindness to His people and to a watching world. This is the only way the world will come to know Him.

This doesn't mean that God calls us in a way that violates our "raw material." Where God calls, God gifts.
A career may end with retirement and lots of "toys." A calling isn't over until the day you die. The rewards of a career may be quite visible, but they are temporary. The significance of a calling lasts for eternity. A career can be disrupted by any number of events - but not a calling. When God calls people, He enables them to fulfill ther callings even in the most unlikely circumstances.

[Chapter 3 Discerning The Call. John Ortberg.]