Let's Talk About My Calling

I'm weird. I believe in really poetic, non-linear, semi-esoteric things that many other people might dismiss as "ungrounded," "illogical," or just "different." I look at God not as a being somewhere else who sometimes interacts with what I'm doing here, but instead as the Thing every other thing exists within--swimming through God like clumsy fat fish.

So it makes sense that when I hear people talk about "Calling" (as in "this is my calling, you guys) I react differently than most. See, I'm deeply committed to my belief God is calling and speaking to us all the time, through all the things around us. I believe we are called to a lot of specific things every day, and then if we don't answer, then God will just keep calling us to something else like the kid in the car who is so excited about every single thing he sees out the window--"look a tree! A cow! A horse!" He wants to call us to stuff because it makes Him happy to make us fulfilled. 

Sometimes He might just want us to invite Him into what we already love to do. If you love playing soccer, let Him get some of that! God loves you to be you doing what you do. If you see something that is completely against the way God wants His world to be (like a policeman shooting an unarmed black kid just for not walking on the sidewalk in Missouri maybe) then you are already called to do something about that.

There was a man named Saul who hated what the early followers of Jesus were saying. He felt like his version of religious truth was THE truth and that the early followers of Jesus were heretics because they didn't believe exactly the same way he did and they didn't follow the rules like him and they didn't interpret Scriptures like him (man, the first century was TOTALLY unlike today, right?).  Saul was so mad at these guys that he was roaming town to town making sure they were arrested and even executed. One day he was heading from one execution to another when a light blinded him and then Jesus asked him why he was persecuting these guys. Jesus spoke to Saul from a light and he was immediately blinded. After that event, he changed his name to Paul and started preaching the Gospel of Jesus to non-Jews all over the Mediterranean area. Well, there was a bit of him "working out his salvation" and all that, but basically he was called while riding a donkey, and then he answered the calling. This is a special case, and is not indicative of the way God calls most people, but that should be painfully obvious as I don't know anyone who has been blinded Jesus and told what he or she was going to do for the rest of his or her life. 

To me, "calling" is a progressive revealing of the future God has for you. You may not ever see your whole calling all at once, but instead you'll see bits and pieces of your calling coming through the fog while the rest hides. To believe that I know I am called to spend the rest of my life doing___ would be really presumptuous of me. I believe I am called to work with students right now, but as far as the next 25 years go, I have no idea what I'll be doing.

Recently I took a job with Youth For Christ. I'm going to work in Germany with international students. These are kids whose parents have been transferred to Germany by their jobs. The students I will be working with are from all over, giving me the opportunity to share the Love I have found with young people who can take that Love back to their homelands and spread it all over the world. I am extremely excited about this next step and believe it is the calling for the next few years of my life. I believe God has revealed through my study of my past as well as prayer about my future that I am supposed to go do this, that I am skilled in what I need, and that he is going to make me adequate. God's absolute futurity--to be God is to be the future and the present and the past all simultaneously--would speak to His ability to prepare me completely for His calling. He has prepared me, is preparing me, and will prepare me in the same way He has called me, will call me, and is calling me simultaneously. The reason the traditional view of calling falls short of the mark for me is it negates what we now know about the quantum nature of time. God has always been calling me in the same way I have always been moving through God to the moment in which He called me. 

I would love your prayer as I move into this new position. I would love your support as I try to raise the substantial funds needed to make this ministry possible (Click HERE to donate to my ministry account). I would love your encouragement because the hardest part of this calling is going to be leaving so many friends behind in the states for long stretches, and loneliness can kill a calling. 

This is an exciting new chapter and one that I could not have foreseen for me even a year ago. I am excited to step into it, and excited to see what God is going to amaze me with as I do. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and I will continue to follow His love like a pillar of fire in the night.