| Subject: The CAll |
Author:
Tim
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Date Posted: 09:44:58 10/24/06 Tue
“For many are called but few are chosen.” I have long struggled with the meaning of this verse. These were Jesus’ words to his disciples as recorded in the twentieth chapter of Matthew’s gospel. It always sounded a bit elitist to me; like you had to have some special qualifications in order to be eligible for ‘the calling’, or in order to answer the call. I recently received some clarity on the meaning of this in relation to my own life that has helped me to understand the calling and what it means for me and I believe for my generation.
As a teenager I received what I consider now to be a ‘calling’ from the Lord to step out and be counted for Him. It came in the form of a dream that I believed, at the time, and can only describe now, as a kind of ‘visitation.’ My incoherent description and explanation to those around me at the time was scary enough for my parents that they thought I should be examined by a professional. I was mixed up, to say the least, and subsequently due to my own foolishness (I was certainly not standing on anything scriptural) and some aggressive behavior was diagnosed as psychotic and sent to the state psychiatric hospital for observation. A month later, after many trials of various anti-psychotic medications, I stopped claiming to the authorities that I had heard from God and was deemed safe for society and released. While I knew in my heart that something very substantial had happened to me to change me forever, I could not explain what it was and through trial and error had learned that it might ‘cause eyebrows to raise,’ and that I should therefore keep it to myself. My hospitalization in the maximum security ward at the state hospital was and still is one of the most vivid and dramatic experiences of my life. I am rarely asked about my stay there by friends or relatives, but have always been willing to talk about it and still am. Much later in my life, as a case manager for the community mental health system, I would return to this place to assist people to rise above the setback of mental illness. But this was not the calling…
Before Jesus said these words, recorded in Matthew, about how ‘many are called, but few are chosen,’ his disciple, Peter, had asked him what they (the disciples) would receive for leaving everything and following him? Jesus then went on to describe what the rewards were for those who answered the call. He spoke of his coming glory and sharing his rule over the ‘twelve tribes’ with his followers and that anyone who leaves houses and lands and everything near and dear, including family members, would receive a ‘hundredfold’ return and inherit eternal life. He went on to describe what the ‘kingdom of heaven’ was like in the parable of the landowner who went out early to hire laborers for his vineyard.
Jesus calls us to be laborers in His vineyard! Again, I can’t tell you what it means for others, but I can tell you that as I reflect on my own life, I can clearly see how the ‘call’ has impacted me down through the years. It has waxed and waned from time to time, but it has always been there tugging on my heart and like the reluctant prophet, Jonah, I have known who has been in pursuit of me all along; it has been the Lord!
Shortly after my encounter with ‘insanity’ as a teenager, I straightened out and knew that I needed to fly right and get with the program. I enrolled in college and shortly after this hooked up with a certain innocent young woman, who would eventually be the mother of my children and my life long companion. Little did she know at the time, what a journey we were about to embark upon. I have long known in my heart, but rarely show it outwardly that Kathy is the grounding influence that God had pre-ordained for me. Learning to appreciate her special gifts and qualities, which often clash so dramatically with my own, has been a challenge that both of us have struggled with over the years. He truly is ALL knowing and I have come to understand more and more how He works all things together for good to those who are the called according to His purposes (Rom 8:28). As a natural born dreamer, I have done well at ignoring the call for most of my adult life. I have pursued many side roads and angles vocationally, including work related to my education at VTC in architecture, the renovation of houses in Virginia, and after moving back to Vermont a recycling business; experiencing near success in several lofty pursuits, never very orthodox, but always wholeheartedly pushing my limits and all the while, Kathy’s love and patience.
In 1994, I was swallowed by the whale! After pushing myself to the limits of what I was capable of physically and emotionally, as a young father and as an entrepreneur trying to stay afloat in a business that had become my life, I reached the breaking point mentally and physically. While I lay in my bed of emotional sickness after a sequence of events that fell like dominoes, I came face to face again with ‘the call.’ An inner voice was saying what had happened before was happening again. I’m calling YOU, are YOU listening? As my life flashed before me, I was awakened again to this awesome question. I remember hearing in my spirit, ‘look to Jerusalem’ and sensing that a great event was about to take place. I remember recalling the many times that people had approached me about Jesus Christ and about making Him my savior and Lord. I didn’t know much, but everything I did know screamed that I needed Him in my life and that I wasn’t big enough, myself, to get through this life on my own. A dear Christian woman, who worked with Kathy at the time, brought me a Bible and I began to read about the new birth.
This was THE turning point of my life! I gave my life to Jesus such as it was and as I began reading this great book, I began to rebuild my identity in light of what the Word of God said. I slowly came to understand that I was saved from hell by accepting Jesus’ sacrifice for my sins and that I had joined ranks (by faith) with those down through the ages who called themselves ‘born-again’ believers! I would try again and again to explain this phenomenon to family and friends, about what had happened to me emotionally, but the harder I tried, it seemed the more confused I got. Through it all, I held on to the one thing that had been consistent since I was a teenager, ‘the call.’ I knew I was being called but I didn’t know what for. I couldn’t explain it, exactly, but I found a few people, very few, who understood what I was going through.
Over the next several years, most of the people I would link up with and who I would come to know as ‘born again’ believers seemed to have as much, if not more, difficulty with this new identity as I did myself. There seemed to me to be a lot of dissension, division and confusion, even within Christian circles, about what it all meant and many of the Christians I knew had more problems getting along than the non-Christians! How on earth would we ever be able to convince the masses that Jesus was ‘the way’ to go when so few of us even agreed on what it meant to be His followers! I, like many of the other Christians I knew, were clearly basket cases for Jesus, barely holding on to the Truth that we had come to put our trust in!
As I began associating myself more and more with other Christians, I read everything I could about the Christian experience. Early on, I would go out several nights a week to various services and meetings in search of the answers. I listened to Christian radio whenever I could. I memorized scripture and began holding a bible study in my home. I began force feeding my kids truths from the Bible and would share with anyone else who would listen, although not many had much tolerance for it, or me. Kathy went along as much as she could, but I had become fanatical. I knew that Jesus was the answer, and HE is, but as a babe in Christ, I would ignore the one thing that seemed to resound in all of the teachings I heard, which was that the Word of God has ALL the answers! Not me! I would hear this over and over again from teachers and preachers that there was life in the Word. I believed it to be true, but I would struggle with the application of the simple truths that the Bible contained. “Love one another”, “Forgive those who trespass against you,” “seek first the kingdom of God” and on and on. I had become a Bible bully and eventually Kathy and my kids would reject my ranting and slowly I began to see myself as a martyr for the cause of Christ. The meetings I would go to became for me gatherings for other martyrs to come together and nurse each other’s wounds. We found our one solace in knowing that we had a genuine relationship with the One true God. We could come together and agree that we had the victory in Jesus, but where was the fruit? It seemed more and more evident to me that all of it would only be significant at the end of life; “In the sweet by and by…”
How does one answer the call? I started this expose’ by quoting a scripture that had been puzzling to me for many years, “For many are called, but few are chosen.” I had always seen the choosing as God’s responsibility, and I didn’t like the fact that I had to wonder if this was or was not a reality for me. Was I indeed worthy for choosing? But as a self confessed follower of Jesus now for a dozen years, I am beginning to see what our Lord was saying to those who believed in Him then and what HE IS STILL saying to his would be disciples today. If we have received ‘the call’, how will we respond to it? In John’s gospel, chapter 8, starting in verse 1, it says:
“Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, ‘If you abide in My word, you are my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
Abide in My Word! He does not tell us as baby Christians to go tell other people to follow Him! Unfortunately, to His detriment, as new Christians, many of us are all too eager to run right out and tell everyone else what Jesus is trying to get US to simply believe, understand and put to work in our own lives! Abide in ME! Get to know Me! I am the Living Word of God! Answering the call means Answering the Call to Abide in Him! Hello! In order for us to be effective ministers of the gospel, we have to first receive what He has freely given and then we will have something to give others! We have to get this Truth inside us and we have to be doers of the word and not just good hearers and repeaters!
I know now that I heard this call at the age of 19 and it resounded again for me at 34 and now at the age of 48 I am finally getting around to answering the call. I know that what God had birthed in me long ago was real and more real than I could even imagine then! As I embark on this next phase of my life, to Abide in Him IS the call! Where will it lead me? I know it will lead to victory in all areas of my life, if I can just do what He says and get my self out of the way!
To quote the apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians:
“That we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may (we all) grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ – from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” - Eph 4:14-16
And “That you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind…” Eph 4:17
“That you put off , concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” Eph 4:22-24
And finally to all my friends and colleagues in the faith, my prayer for myself, as well as for you, and all in the body of Christ, echoes that of the apostle Paul from the first chapter of that same epistle:
“That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, (that) the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” – Eph. 1:17-23
Amen
T.O. – 10/24/2006
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