Do You Embrace Your Calling?
2 Peter 1:10: Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble;
If I said for you to embrace someone you would not just give them a little hug. To embrace is like when someone comes home from a long time away and the family meets them at the airport, then grabs them as though they will never let go.
So often, people fail to embrace the One that truly matters. In Jeremiah 29:11 we are told about God’s plan for good for us. We might not believe it if we saw it just once, except we see this is a major theme all through scripture, that is, to simply trust God. The just shall live by faith, without faith it’s impossible to please Him, and everything done apart from faith is sin. These are all wrapped up and packaged simply in the phrase, “trust God”.
The Israelites failure was in not trusting God. The Psalms urge us to trust Him again and again. “Why am I emphasizing this?” you might ask. It is because God did. Perhaps one of the Lord’s greatest desires is that His children trust Him and yet ironically, this is the very thing believers seem to struggle with. This is because many believers are not truly acquainted with what they profess to believe. They will trust tradition and denominationalism over the very Word of God!
So to the point, how does this have anything to do with making your election sure or embracing the call of God? First understand that the call of God is what He has had, is having, and will have for you to do. Second, you will never embrace what you don’t trust. If you don’t believe God has a good plan for you even in the midst of trial, you will give up on it before the fruit is ever ripened. It is the equivalent to a farmer looking at his corn in June and saying, “This doesn’t work.” He then plows his crop under before it ever had time to produce, though the ability was there all along.
Christian! Make your calling sure! It’s in the earliest stages where the amount of fruit something will produce in your life is determined. Notice i said stages and not years. Some people are Christians for years and produce almost nothing because they don’t tend to the call. If a grape farmer tries to trim his vines in August he is already too late. He will have to wait until the next season before he can again.
Embrace where God has you and what He has you to do when and where He has you do them. If you do this YOU WILL BE fruitful in life. People spend more time without because they don’t have patience when they need it and sometimes push off blessing indefinitely. Don’t be like this! Embrace God, embrace the call, and watch your life change! If you are not seeing fruit in your life it is time to consider that you might not be embracing God’s calling.
God has given us pastors along with the Holy Spirit to help us, to equip us, to ensure we will walk out what God has for us but this too we must embrace. The degree to which you embrace it is the degree to which you will fulfill it. Trust God and His methods and embrace them with your whole heart. Seek the Holy Spirit on what you can do more effectively and what things need removed from your life. Every vine needs to be pruned. A good farmer doesn’t bawk at this, they embrace it!
2 Peter 1:8 (NKJV)
For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Be Blessed,
Pastor Jeff
