Still 'fine-tuning' our process. You can get to the original article HERE
NOTE: THIS ARTICLE is a reprint from the blog of reverend Kevin Rogers of New Song Church in Windsor, Ontario and is reproduced here for your convenience. You can visit the his blog called "The Orphan Age" HERE.
What is the call of God?
It is the lifelong
journey in which each believer is called to know Christ in His fullness and to glorify
God through responding to that Heavenward pull.
The highest possible call for any Christian is our high
calling to come to Jesus and follow Him. Being called to be a pastor or the
head of some great ministry endeavour is not the top of the heap. You can have
a title and be well known for things that you do, but it means nothing without
a personal surrender to your high calling.
When Paul did a fearless, moral inventory of his career as a
religious teacher and apostle, he confessed this to the Church at Philippi.
Philippians 3:
7 But
whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What
is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider
them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not
having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is
through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the
basis of faith. 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power
of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in
his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection
from the dead.
12 Not
that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but
I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers
and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one
thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I
press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me
heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Paul was not interested in playing it safe and leaving
behind a personal legacy. He only wanted to know Jesus more and more. That was
his high calling, and we are invited to hang on loosely to our resume of
accomplishments and bragging rights.
Deep down, Paul knew that his greatest accomplishments were
garbage compared to the excellency of knowing Jesus.
Paul did not put any confidence in his own arm of flesh. He
could work hard like anyone else and take personal risks, but always in the
context of knowing Jesus and making Him known to a lost and dying world that
was not listening to the Father’s voice.