June 07, 2012

Making Our Calling Sure - Ramona Heikel


Lately I’ve noticed that my reading and devotions have been focusing on my “calling”, but thinking about that often makes me nervous.  It gives me performance anxiety, because I’ve been given an assignment, but what if I fail?  I believe God wants me to write, but I’m not sure if I have the ability to consistently glorify him, or be a good witness through my words.

Well, I need not wonder any more.  The fact is, I don’t have the ability.  That’s one of the freeing things about being 54 years old.  I’ve had most of my life to try as hard as I can to accomplish what I felt was important, and have become painfully aware of my limitations.

I not only fear that I will fail at my most important responsibilities, I fear making a fool of myself publicly by publishing what I write and having people chuckle to themselves about this newbie who should have revised a few more times, or roll their eyes at my silly ideas about life.

It occurred to me while I was listening to a sermon how much of a risk Noah and Moses took by obeying God’s call on their lives.  They could have made such fools of themselves if they’d misunderstood God.  And if the embarrassment wasn’t bad enough, they could have even gotten themselves thrown in jail or killed.  It took a lot of faith to do what they did. 

Or, I should say, it took a lot of faith in God to obey what he told them to do.  That’s different from having faith in themselves.

Lately, I am realizing that it is God’s responsibility to make something of my efforts.  He is the one that had the brilliant idea of working through humans to love and serve mankind, instead of taking the safe route of just doing it himself through supernatural methods (which would have taken a lot of pressure off of us!).  But I believe that this plan of his is perfect, because he is the one who thought of it.

Notice that in Acts 1:8 Jesus does NOT say, “After you ask for the Holy Spirit, you’ve got to try your hardest to demonstrate my power, and hopefully you won’t be too chicken to be my witnesses in your neighbourhood or overseas.”  (This is actually how I’ve been reading it for the past thirty years.)

No, he says, “You WILL RECEIVE power…and you WILL BE my witnesses.”  As in, “It’s going to be amazing what God’s power will do through you.  I can hardly wait!”

In Exodus 31, when God chose (called!) Bezalel to take responsibility for the designs of the Tent of Meeting and its furnishings, he “filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, knowledge and craftsmanship” so that he could make beautiful things.  God puts his Spirit in us, too, giving us writing ability, intelligence, knowledge and craftsmanship to make beautiful words.

I believe that this is what makes our calling sure: our awareness of God’s power and our willingness for him to use us for his own purposes.

Posted by Ramona

www.happilywriting.com


[Clipart courtesy of ChristianClipArts.net]

7 comments:

  1. Addy Oberlin7:46 am GMT-7

    That is very true. We do not want to fail. When I wrote my first book, I wanted to do it in third person. It looked safe. Then someone reminded me of David and how vulnerable he was when he wrote the Psalms.
    I wrote in first person and took the challenge.
    The Lord had given me the urge to write on that subject, so I better obey. I am glad that I did.

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  2. You certainly put a finger on something, Ramona! Wow.... what a revelation! And how freeing it is!

    Thanks so much for sharing... and for your transparency. I feel some hitherto unidentified thing fall off my own shoulders.

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  3. You're right. Our job is to do what we're requested to do to our best ability. The rest is His responsiblity-when, where and how ,our work is used.
    I do blog weekly on my personal blog Precious Moments. I don't send it to anyone, so I don't receive any comments. But I know it's viewed by many online, even internationally. I believe as long as we do our work in obedience, God will take care of the rest for His glory.

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  4. Hi Ramona,

    It's so motivating to know that we WILL receive power and craftsmanship too, to carry out God's designs. Wow. God's Word is so relevant to our writerly lives!

    Pam M.

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  5. Ramona, what you say resonates with me! Well said!

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  6. All of these comments put together are a lovely little sermon, and very affirming--most appreciated!

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  7. Praise the Lord! Girl is preachin' fine now. I do wish I had me a Hammond organ up in here.

    Yes, I mean it.

    No, I'm a white man.

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