How do you answer the phone?
“Hello?”
“This is Sam (or whatever your name is).”
“Yeah?”
“Hey!” (usually if you have callerID)”
“Talk to me.”
“Wazzup?”
Choosing to ignore it.
Each of us here could get the same phone call and yet have a different response.
But what if God calls? How do we respond?
Does that seem like a pretty crazy question – What if God calls?
But he does!
The call of God! Is that a church term or what? It’s definitely not something you hear too much on Super Bowl Sunday, right?
When did you last hear a star quarterback, like the Patriots’ Tom Brady or the Eagles’ Donovan McNabb, say they were called by God to call the plays for their team or even great champion coaches like Bill Belichick or Andy Reidy say they were called by God to lead their team to victory?
Usually not heard, but we hear it in church circles all the time.
We say, “Well, she’s been called to be a missionary” or “He’s been called into a ministry with the homeless,” or “He, or she has been called to a church in Minnesota.”
But how many times do we hear, “Well, she’s been called to be a hospital nurse,” or “He’s been called to be a plumber?”
That’s too bad. We’ve limited the call of God to the “professional” fields, the “divine” places – churches, mission fields, chaplaincies.
Paul never thought that way. That’s why he could say, “I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the wonderful future he has promised to those he called.”
Paul wasn’t addressing a convention of pastors. He wasn’t speaking to religious professionals.
He was talking to his fellow tentmakers and the fisherman and the shopkeepers and the government officials that made up that struggling first-century church.
What an empowering statement he made to them – No longer are you “just” anything; no longer are you common, ordinary, standard of even average. You are called by God!
Understand the power of that statement. We are called!
Say it with me – We are called!
It’s time for us who are followers of Jesus Christ, disciples of the Son of God, our Lord, to step forward and “not be ashamed to testify about our Lord … by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life” (2 Tim. 1:8-9)!
Or as Paul said in Ephesians 4:1, “Live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”
I don’t think we’re doing that.
I think we have a whole different kind of Christianity going on than the one we should.
Our Christianity doesn’t say “We Are Called.” It says “We Are Comfortable.”
This is what I call “Inactive Christianity” or “Couch Potato Christianity.”
• This is Christianity owned by people who sing “We Shall Not be Moved” and mean it!
• They don’t want anything to either disturb them or excite them; the best position is a neutral position
• They don’t mind the hard work of Christianity; they could watch others do it all day!
• Rather than being world-changers we have too much become pew-sitters
• We neither run the good race or fight the good fight; that’s too much work.
I hate the gym. I’d rather go by it than step into it. It hurts! It’s too much like work. I tell people that when I worked in the oilfields a zillion years ago that I stayed in shape by working, but now I have to work to stay in shape.
I hate the gym, but I like the results.
Yeah, I’d rather eat a carton of ice cream while watch too much TV, but that won’t get the good results I want for my life.
Inactive Christianity won’t get the god results we need for our lives of discipleship or for the life of our church.
Our Christianity doesn’t say “We Are Called.” It says “We Are Confused.”
I call this “reactive Christianity” or “Knee-Jerk Christianity.”
• This kind of Christianity goes wherever the wind blows; it follows every trend, fad and flavor.
I am grown very cautious of the many church plans and programs that populate the Christian playing field. A couple of decades ago I thought the church should be all about “Evangelism Explosion.” then I got wind of “Friendship Evangelism.” Even more recently I’ve had “knee-jerk” reactions to “Promise Keepers,” “Contagious Christianity,” “Natural Church Development,” “Church Growth Institute, “Spiritual Gifts Implementation,” and “The Purpose Driven Church.” I’m currently trying to figure out what an emerging church is, whether or not we should have a traditional, contemporary or blended service or some mutated version of all three, and which version of the Bible we should buy to replace our deteriorating pew bibles. It’s all much too much!
About a year ago I read an article about the shift in church leadership styles. I thought it would be an article I could sink my teeth into, but instead all I got was a bad taste in my mouth because most of what I read I didn’t understand. A typical statement in that article went like this:
“…we need to become premier provocateurs and allow the organic byproducts of team ownership and community consensus to naturally flow.”
“Leadership is more about fully being, inhabiting my destiny, and having a inner morphic dynamic with God.”
It’s no wonder that we’re confused, but we’re confused because we have these knee-jerk reactions or the many, many choices we’re given and directions we’re told we ought to be going.
• We are confused, living a reactive Christianity, because we’ve stopped believing what Jesus said about himself – “I am the wire, the truth and the life.”
• We are confused because instead of praying for God to show us what, if any, of the multitudes of programs is right for our church, and our personal discipleship, we line up at the smorgasbord of program possibilities and try a little of each one.
• That’s a dangerous way to do church because it’s unfocused, without purpose … confused!
I saw a recent T-Shirt that had this printed on it, which I think could be the slogan for today’s church:
“I’m confused! No wait … maybe I’m not.”
We should say “We Are Called.”
To say we are called is to say we are involved in “Pro-Activity Christianity.”
It can also be called “Courageous Christianity.”
• This is the kind of Christianity that is externalized, not internalized; that is, it’s lived out and not just thought about.
James 1:22-25
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror, and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it – he will be blessed in what he does.
Verse 25 applied to the church: “But the church that looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what it has heard, but doing it – it will be blessed in what it does.
• To be called by God means that we do something with the faith we’ve been given through our acceptance of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and show the world that faith in Christ is not a crutch or a safety cushion or some kind of fire insurance.
• To be called by God is to take a pro-active stand for what we believe to be true in the name of Christ and to take our faith seriously.
• Pro-active Christianity realizes that it’s only by faith that we can create a difference in this world we live in because it’s only by faith that we are empowered by God to make a difference.
Listen to what Paul shared with Timothy, a young disciple stepping boldly into ministry:
2 Tim. 1:8-9
So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life – not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.”
• Be pro-active, by the power of God, and live in the purpose and grace of Christ.
“Do not be ashamed!”
In 1975 there was a rag-tag group of hippies, draft-dodgers, old sea dogs and scientists who gathered under the name of Greenpeace to protest the slaughter of whales in the Pacific. Their strategy was simple – head out in an old fishing boat to the North Pacific waters where the whales feed every year then use smaller Zodiacs, inflatable motorized boats, to come between the harpoon boats and the whales.
We picked out a departing harpoon boat, the Vlastny, and followed it. It was soon pursuing
a pod of sperm whales. Hunter leapt into a Zodiac with Watson, Korotva took Fred Easton,
and I went with Patrick Moore. Hunter and Watson tried to position themselves between the
harpoon boat and the frantic whales, but Watson’s outboard sputtered to a stop and they were
thrown aside by the bow of the killer boat. Korotva pulled up, traded passengers with Watson,
and sped off with Hunter. They positioned themselves directly in front of the massive cannon,
shielding the whales. When they dropped into a trough, however, the cannon fired and the
harpoon flew over their heads and exploded in the side of a whale. The harpoon cable slashed
down beside us,” recalls Hunter, “nearly ripping us in two.” Easton turned to me with thumbs
up. He had captured the entire episode on film.
That small group of people took a dangerous pro-active stand for something they believed in and they helped change the world’s view of God’s creation. I couldn’t help but be thankful to them after watching whales breach and dive in the bay off Puerto Vallarta. What beautiful creatures.
I pray that we might be as pro-active in our Christianity; to boldly stand between the mad morality and the values of this crazy culture we’re enmeshed in and the way, truth and life that we believe comes from Christ and Christ alone.
We are called by God!
We are empowered, emboldened and emblazoned to God to “live a life worthy of the calling (we) have received.”
Therefore, I pray for all of us the prayer of Paul for the Ephesians: “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.”
We are called. Let’s live like it!
