Discerning the Right Voice
HOW do we know we are hearing God’s voice and not merely the voice of our own aspirations, desires that contain godly ambition and selfishness co-mingled? How do we sort God’s voice out of the clamor of so many messages?
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking – A Theological ABC.
Without both, we fail.
Too many people in the church are doing things that “ought to be done,” but they don’t like it. It’s just wearing them down, and there’s a joylessness about the whole thing.
We failed miserably when we are doing something that “needs to be done” but doing it with no gladness. And this gladness isn’t necessarily emotional “highs” - we can suffer and sacrifice and still be glad about it. It is the sense of significance / meaning / purpose / seeing that the work as worthwhile rather then necessary. The former precedes the latter.
It’s just as wrong to do something that needs doing and hate it as it is to just do something that we like but doesn’t really need to be done. So a working theology of a call needs to include this sense of gladness, trying to find the common ground between our deep gladness and the needs around us.
Inherent in God’s call is something fierce and unmanageable. He summons, but he will not be summoned. God does the calling: we do the answering.
Jesus told his disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16). There is always a sense of compulsion, at times even a sense of angst and pain, about God’s call. Struck blind on the road of Damascus, Paul later wrote, “Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor 9:16). Jeremiah said, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot” (Jer 20:9).
Spurgeon saw the “divine constraint” as such a sure sign of a call that he advised young men considering the ministry not to do it if, in any way, they could see themselves doing something else.
At times, we try to “tame” the call:-
(1) Equating a staff position in a church or a religious organization with the call itself. But the call always transcends the things we do to earn money, even it those things are done in the church. The same distinction we urge our people to recognize applies to us: Our vocation in Christ is one thing; our occupation, quite another.
Our vocation is our calling to serve Christ; our occupations are the jobs we do to earn our way in the world. While it is our calling to press our occupations into the service of our vocation, it is idolatrous to equate the two. Happy is the man or woman whose vocation and occupation come close. But it is no disaster if they do not.
If tomorrow, I am fired and am forced to find employment in the gas station down the street; to turn my hobbies collection into a business through selling on eBay, etc, my vocation would remain intact. I still would be called to preach and to teach. To inspire and to lead. Nothing would have changed my call – just the situation / circumstance in which I obey this call.
Someone once said, “I may preach as the paid pastor of a church, but I am not paid to preach – I am given an allowance so that I can be more free to preach and teach” Ralph Turnbull.
(2) “Clericalizing” it. Seminary education does not qualify a person for the ordained ministry, nor does additional psychological testing and field experience. Naturally, these may be valuable and even necessary for the ministry, but none of them alone or in combination is sufficient.
No office or position can be equated with the call. No credential, degree or test should be confused with it. No professional jargon or psychobabble can tame the call of God. No training or experience or ecclesiastical success can replace it.
Only the call suffices. Everything else is footnote and commentary – Ben Patterson Mastering the Pastoral Role.
God does the calling: we do the answering. He call us to serve him and his work. Are you doing what God had called you to? Are you in a place “where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Coming Next…”Recognizing the Professional realities”. Stay tuned….
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking – A Theological ABC.
Without both, we fail.
Too many people in the church are doing things that “ought to be done,” but they don’t like it. It’s just wearing them down, and there’s a joylessness about the whole thing.
We failed miserably when we are doing something that “needs to be done” but doing it with no gladness. And this gladness isn’t necessarily emotional “highs” - we can suffer and sacrifice and still be glad about it. It is the sense of significance / meaning / purpose / seeing that the work as worthwhile rather then necessary. The former precedes the latter.
It’s just as wrong to do something that needs doing and hate it as it is to just do something that we like but doesn’t really need to be done. So a working theology of a call needs to include this sense of gladness, trying to find the common ground between our deep gladness and the needs around us.
Inherent in God’s call is something fierce and unmanageable. He summons, but he will not be summoned. God does the calling: we do the answering.
Jesus told his disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16). There is always a sense of compulsion, at times even a sense of angst and pain, about God’s call. Struck blind on the road of Damascus, Paul later wrote, “Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor 9:16). Jeremiah said, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot” (Jer 20:9).
Spurgeon saw the “divine constraint” as such a sure sign of a call that he advised young men considering the ministry not to do it if, in any way, they could see themselves doing something else.
At times, we try to “tame” the call:-
(1) Equating a staff position in a church or a religious organization with the call itself. But the call always transcends the things we do to earn money, even it those things are done in the church. The same distinction we urge our people to recognize applies to us: Our vocation in Christ is one thing; our occupation, quite another.
Our vocation is our calling to serve Christ; our occupations are the jobs we do to earn our way in the world. While it is our calling to press our occupations into the service of our vocation, it is idolatrous to equate the two. Happy is the man or woman whose vocation and occupation come close. But it is no disaster if they do not.
If tomorrow, I am fired and am forced to find employment in the gas station down the street; to turn my hobbies collection into a business through selling on eBay, etc, my vocation would remain intact. I still would be called to preach and to teach. To inspire and to lead. Nothing would have changed my call – just the situation / circumstance in which I obey this call.
Someone once said, “I may preach as the paid pastor of a church, but I am not paid to preach – I am given an allowance so that I can be more free to preach and teach” Ralph Turnbull.
(2) “Clericalizing” it. Seminary education does not qualify a person for the ordained ministry, nor does additional psychological testing and field experience. Naturally, these may be valuable and even necessary for the ministry, but none of them alone or in combination is sufficient.
No office or position can be equated with the call. No credential, degree or test should be confused with it. No professional jargon or psychobabble can tame the call of God. No training or experience or ecclesiastical success can replace it.
Only the call suffices. Everything else is footnote and commentary – Ben Patterson Mastering the Pastoral Role.
God does the calling: we do the answering. He call us to serve him and his work. Are you doing what God had called you to? Are you in a place “where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Coming Next…”Recognizing the Professional realities”. Stay tuned….
posted by Bobby Lee at
8:10 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home