Being Called Out

In my life the calling has been a struggle for me. Some times I get caught in emotion that leads me to think that it wasn’t really God, or sometimes I get called to do this, but then a week later it’s that, it leads me to mass confusion and discomforted in my heart.

Testimony time…

When I was in the 7th grade I went up to the alter laid down my heart, I said that I am Your servant and I could feel God calling me to be a pastor. I was very emotion; I was crying and praising the Lord.

So to continue the story I lived my life knowing that God wanted me to be a pastor…BAM! Stop there….now what is wrong with this statement?

I lived my life knowing that God wanted me to be a pastor…

So before I tell you what is wrong with that statement, let’s go to the next chapter of this little story…

So I started to plan a future, what schools would be the right school for me, what do I do now to make this calling to come true…BAM…. There is problem number two…

Continue.

At about this time I am in high school, and things are getting hard. School wise any way, I was a freshman and all I wanted to do was fit in, I wanted to be cool. Life and my calling became hard. I began to look back on the day of my calling and question my calling and questioning God. I told myself that I was just emotion and I really wasn’t called to be a pastor. Than came the guilt trip that caused discomfort in my heart. I was sicken because I “though” I was lying to myself, guilty that I didn’t figure it out.

Okay let’s stop there for a second



Life after the Calling

Now let’s go back to the start…

I lived my life knowing that God wanted me to be a pastor…

Let me rephrase that…I got my calling now I done.

God doesn’t work that way, there would be no life because we are never done with our calling. So I can live my life knowing that God wants me to be a pastor but that’s not the end… The story doesn’t end with a calling, in only begins a greater, and more passionate you.

Let me tell you a story of a guy named Moses…

God called Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, through God calling him through a burning bush. So what would have happened if Moses did what I did?

Okay I got my calling to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, so I must be done. That would be a lame story I think because there’s no action. Life is full of risks, and taking risks takes faith, and to walk by faith, is to trust that God holds the walls of water up while you cross the red sea.

A calling from God is a verb, you do your calling, you live your calling, and the story doesn’t stop at the calling, it only begins. Don’t forget that a calling is an assignment from God. Our lives are always transforming, everyday, every second God is making every move, every single breathe an act for His plan,

This is kind of lame but if you think of it, God is calling us to make sure we don’t for get to do the simple things like breathing. Because if God didn’t tell use to breathe, we would be dishonoring God by breathing because we wouldn’t be listing to Him.

So I believe that God is always calling us everyday, in everything I do.



Who’s bigger than you?

So to continue the story, where I‘m trying to plan my future it became real hard for me, apparently I didn’t know Jeremiah 29: 11

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

I was a little control freak, I wanted to make sure I didn’t fail God, because He called me to be a pastor.

Okay let me say this; God is way smarter, way wiser, way bigger than any of our problems. So let me put it another way, we are incredibly stupid (compared to God), we are a grain of sand in this world, we are so, so small that we can’t do it by are our selves, if we try to we will fail, fail, fail!!!

So how do we not fail?

Trust in the Lord

Have Faith in the Lord

Love the Lord

Let him carry you through all your problems. Like the poem “foot prints in the sand” by Mary Stevenson.

During your times of trial and suffering,when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you."

You see, God is their all the time, He is there to carry us through the hard times. For me it was fear of failing. But when God is carrying you, how can you fail.

God has a plan for you, and you can’t let your self take God great plan and try to fulfill it my your self because you wont be able too. God knows how the plan starts, how it grows, and how it ends.

So how do we do this?

Well you have to trust in the Lord, have Faith in the Lord, and Love the Lord, and God will carry you. Your calling will become clearer when you realize that you can’t do it alone.



Discernment

Pray to God; pray that he will give you a heart of openness. A good way to know if you are doing what God is do for your life, is to ask some how is older and more wise, and who has been through life. This is good because it allows you to be open and it gives the receiver of you heart something to pray about and someone to guide you through your discernment of what God is calling you to do.

It’s hard to know what to believe when you’re not sure if God is really calling you.

For me it was very hard, because I grew up thinking I know what God had planed for me but when things didn’t go my way I stopped and cried like a little baby because I was a control freak, as I said early. But when my earthy heart starts to desire earth ways and jealousy runs through my veins, I see others and how God is working in there lives, so my jealousy of them blinded me of how God was really working in my life.

You see how important discernment is. Know that God has a plan for every one but Gods plan for him over there is going to be different from your own.

Faith in the Lord, the Lord will lead you to what he wants.



So what know?

I live life everyday wondering what God is going to do to day, the people he is going to allow me to meet, and what I am going to do for Him today. I thank Him every day, for the opportunity he has given me to live a life for Him.

So if one is struggling to hear what God is calling you to do, I will pray for you, I also believe that if you are patient God will not abandoned you, out in the cool. I also believe that if opportunity arises from God, you need to jump on it. Because God is in all of our opportunities because God knows, when you jump on His opportunities you are taking a leap of faith.

Let me give you an example…

I was given the opportunity to go to Rwanda this summer, and what we were calling it was a short term mission trip. The reason why is because we were there for only two weeks.

Now, just because I went on a “Mission trip,” that must mean I am called to be a missionary.

This goes back to discernment, on knowing what God has for me. But as you know, in the beginning I said I was called to be a pastor. These two callings are contradicting each other.

Why would God do that?

Well He wouldn’t because God doesn’t contradict Himself, He is greater than us, and he knows the bigger picture. The bigger picture, that lays our futures into God’s hands.

So was my mission trip pointless? Well God doesn’t see it that way; He sees the opportunity that I took and the risk of getting my self into the world, as a leap of Faith.

So who knows, God may calling me to lead a short term mission trip when I’m older, But going on this mission trip has made me think in a different way, and grow in my spiritual life. Now that is great.

I can also guarantee, that God will use my experiences to dwell in my heart making me more like the man God wants me to be.

So in closing I would like to say to be called out, is one of greatest thinks God can do for us, but there is something even greater, which is the growth that develop your heart, mind, and soul, to fulfill your calling,

The calling is fun, But the journey is where the parties at. And the joy of arriving at Gods plan when life is over.