LICC - Word for the week - Being called...

word for the week - being called
(Originally receive 18 April 2005)

Yesterday (17th April 2005) was Anglican Vocation Sunday – designed to challenge us to see what we do and where we do it as our personal vocation, God’s special calling, to serve him. We constantly pray for you that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfil every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. 1 Thessalonians 1:11

God calls us to serve him in the place where we can best fulfil every good purpose, use our gifts, contribute to the good running of our community, nation and world, acquire enough money to look after ourselves and our dependents, and where we can daily act in ways that are prompted by our faith.

In one way it is simply saying that God is in charge of our lives. But for most of us life is not as simple as that. Choices we make can send us in directions we never intended, into jobs we never particularly enjoyed. Choices by others can deny us the freedom to use the gifts we know God has given us and deny us ordinary fulfilments.

Knowing that we are called, that we have a vocation to serve him where we work, presents us with a twofold challenge. We are challenged to accept our calling this Monday morning, even if it is in some way not quite what we would have chosen. Yet that is where today we work out good purposes and act prompted by faith. It is where we learn to grow the fruit of the Spirit, maybe especially patience and self-control. This today is my calling.

The second challenge is to be ready for a fresh calling, for a new word from the Lord, to take a risk, to change direction. A sense that we are in the wrong place can be our call to patient endurance, but it can also be a call to move on.

Charles Wesley wrote -

Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go,
My daily labour to pursue;
Thee, only thee, resolved to know,
In all I think, or speak, or do.*
Making the Lord and his calling our first priority can transform an unhappy placement into a true vocation, and make the future a great adventure.

Margaret Killingray
London Institute for Contemporary Christianity