Have You Heard The Call?

Earlier today I was looking at things I had posted 13 years ago at Thinking Out Loud (this was before C201 existed) and discovered the name John Rothra. I remembered reading his material at the time, and discovered that (as of last week) he is still writing. Later I realized that we’ve used his material three times previously here, twice as recent as 2019.

He has just started a series on “The Hero’s Journey.” He explains,

Depending on which hero’s journey structure you look at, it will contain various numbers of steps or stages. However, despite the differences, there are five core stages that exist within most (if not all) models, and it is those five that I’ll be using for this series.  Those stages are:

1. The Call
2. The Wise Mentor
3. The Struggle
4. The Growth
5. The Victory

So what follows is an excerpt from the first part, dealing with “the call.” Click on the header which follows to read the whole article.

Using the Hero’s Journey to Understand the Christian Journey, Part 1: The Gospel Call

The Gospel Call: Two Types

Each Christian’s journey, like the hero’s, begins with a call.  That is, the person is invited to go on the journey.  For a Christian, this call is the gospel call, and it consists of two types of calls: the human call and the divine call.   These two calls – human and divine – often go by various names, but whatever they may be called, we do see each of them in Scripture.

The Human Call

What is the human call? The human call is when one person shares the gospel with another person and then invites them to respond to the gospel message.  This is evangelism, or sharing the gospel of Jesus, and we see this call in Scripture.  For example, in Luke 14, Jesus tells a parable about a master who is holding a banquet.  He wants many people to attend, so he sends his servant out with instructions to invite people to come to the banquet.  In verse 23, Jesus says,

²³ And the master said to the servant, “Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.”

Luke 14:23

In this parable, Jesus (who is the master) is telling his servant (who is you and I), to invite people to come to the banquet.  In other words, you and I are commanded to share the gospel with others and invite them to put their faith in Jesus.

We see the human call mentioned later in Luke’s gospel:

⁴⁵ Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, ⁴⁶ and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, ⁴⁷ and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

Luke 24:45-47

Jesus is telling his disciples – including you and I – that the gospel of Jesus’ death for the forgiveness of sins, his physical resurrection, and repentance is to be preached to everyone all over the world.  We later see the human call being issued by Peter in the book of Acts:

³⁷ Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” ³⁸ And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Acts 2:37-38

Here, Peter has just preached the gospel and now asks the listeners to respond to what they just heard.

Thus, we see from Scripture that there is a human call aspect of the gospel call, but what about the divine call?

The Divine Call

The divine call is when God himself invites a person to respond to the gospel message.  While God can issue this call at any time, according to Scripture, it occurs through the preaching of the gospel (Rom 10:14-17; Acts 2:14-41). Through the divine call, God not only calls people to respond to the gospel, but he also convicts them of their sin.  We see the divine call addressed at least twice in John’s gospels.

In John 6, Jesus is addressing some disbelieving Jews who are not accepting what he is telling them.  The apostle records Jesus’ response:

⁴³ Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. ⁴⁴ No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”

John 6:43-44

Jesus makes it clear that God himself sends people to Jesus.  This is the divine call.  However, Jesus again references this call in John 16 where Jesus is teaching about the work of the Holy Spirit:

⁸ And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: ⁹ concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; ¹⁰ concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; ¹¹ concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

John 16:8-11

As you can see, Jesus tells us that part of the work of the third person of the trinity, the Holy Spirit, is convicting people of their sin.  This is, again, is a reference to the divine call in which the Holy Spirit convicts a sinner and invites him or her to respond by repenting of their sin in faith.

Thus, we see in Scripture that the gospel call consists of both a human call and a divine call.  The question is, how can people respond?

…to learn how people can respond, continue reading by clicking this link. Don’t miss this.

Wishing You Were Someplace Else

It’s very easy to wish your circumstances were different. If only we’d bought that other house. If only I had taken the other job. If only I had married the other person. If only I had moved to that other city.

Earlier today I found myself stuck by the wording of 1 Cor. 7:17 in the NIV:

Nevertheless, each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God has called them. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches.

The specific context is marriage; and the earlier verses can be applied what a new believer is to do if they find themselves married to a non-believer; as well as to widows, the unmarried, etc. But the verse also seems to speak to the broader life issues I outlined in the first paragraph.

We have friends who were missionaries in Kenya, East Africa. One young man who was confined to a wheelchair accepted Christ as Savior and Lord and felt called to be a missionary. The Christian workers there presented him with the impracticalities of this, but he felt assured of the Lord’s protection from weather and wild animals, so when last seen, he was headed off in his wheelchair along a dirt path to destinations unknown.

While I don’t know how that story ended, I do know of people in North America who have followed the call of Christ, and felt that immediately they were to quit their job and go into ministry. I am sure that this works out well for some of them, but no doubt others get caught up in the zeal of the moment, missing out on the possibility that Christ has now called them to be his representative in whatever office, factory, school, neighborhood, etc. they find themselves living.

Closer to the verse’s context, I am sure that other have used their new-found faith to justify leaving an unbelieving spouse. Eugene Peterson translates the same verse this way:

And don’t be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God’s place for you. Live and obey and love and believe right there. God, not your marital status, defines your life. Don’t think I’m being harder on you than on the others. I give this same counsel in all the churches.

At the root of this is a general discontentment. Ray Pritchard notes:

• If we’re young, we want to be older. If we’re old, we wish we were younger.
• If it’s old, we want something new. If it’s new, we want something newer.
• If it’s small, we want something bigger. If it’s big, we want something really big.
• If we have a hundred dollars, we want two hundred. If we have two hundred, we want five hundred.
• If we have an apartment, we want a condo. If we have a condo, we want a house. If we have a house, we want a bigger house. Or a new house. Or a nicer house. Or maybe we want to scale down and live in an apartment again.
• If we have a job, we dream of a better job, a bigger job, a closer job, with a bigger office, a better boss, better benefits, more challenge, bigger opportunity, nicer people to work for, and more vacation time.
• If we’re single, we dream of being married. If we’re married, … (you can finish that sentence yourself.).

We Were Born Discontented. None of this is unusual in any way. We were born discontented and some of us stay that way forever. And a certain amount of discontentment can be good for the soul. It’s not wrong to have dreams about what the future might hold. The hope of something better drives us forward and keeps us working, inventing, striving, creating and innovating. But there is a kind of discontentment that leads in a wrong direction. Here are five signs that discontentment is dragging us down spiritually:

1) Envy. The inability to rejoice at the success of others.
2) Uncontrolled Ambition. The desire to win at all costs, no matter what it takes or who gets trampled in the process.
3) Critical Spirit. The tendency to make negative, hurtful, cutting remarks about others.
4) Complaining Spirit. The disposition to make excuses and to blame others or bad circumstances for our problems. A refusal to take personal responsibility. Inability to be thankful for what we already have.
5) Outbursts of Anger. Angry words spoken because our expectations were not met.

The discontented person looks around and says, “I deserve something better than this.” Because he is never happy and never satisfied, he drags others into the swamp with him. No wonder Benjamin Franklin declared, “Contentment makes a poor man rich, discontent makes a rich man poor.”

He goes on to note:

The first principle is repeated three times in this paragraph:

“Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him” (v. 17).

“Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him” (v. 20).

“Brothers, each man, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation God called him to” (v. 24).

This is a case where the meaning is very clear: Lead the life God assigns to you. God has given each of us a job to do. He has gifted each person in a certain way and has assigned us a particular place in life. This reflects a very high view of God’s sovereignty. We are both assigned and called to a certain place in life. The Greek words are very strong and definite. The old Puritans used to say, “God orders everything with perfect wisdom.” I wonder how many of us would say that. Almost unconsciously, we want to change “everything” to “some things” or “a few things” or even “most things.” But “everything?” Isn’t that going too far? What about all the pain and suffering and evil in the world? How can that be “ordered” by God? We can either talk about that for the next 70 years and still not settle it, or we can simply say that if God doesn’t “order” all things, then he’s not really God at all. He’s not the author of evil but even evil must serve his ultimate purpose. Sin cannot exist outside of God’s control or else God isn’t truly sovereign. I freely admit this is a mystery, but it is a mystery inherent in being creatures and not the Creator. The fact that we can’t fully understand these things simply proves once again that “he’s God and we’re not.”

This is just a small part of larger sermon manuscript; you can read the whole text at Sermon Central.

Of course, I couldn’t just stop there without reminding us of Paul’s words in Philippians 4:

^11b I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. ^12a I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation…

Again, while the specific context is marriage and family-related, Paul is laying down a principle here that applies broadly; but oh, how often we wish were just someplace else. While some of this is a reasoned consideration of life options, I am sure that some of it is just an escapist mentality or a fantasy mindset.

God has you exactly where you are today to fulfill his purposes in your world. Remember Pritchard’s words above: Lead the life God assigns to you.