The Call Of God

The Call of God

Philippians 3:14

I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Usually when you hear this verse preached, the preacher focuses on the prize, or pressing toward the prize. Well today I am going in a different direction. I want to talk about the calling of God, or more specifically, the high calling of God. Too many times I hear Christians say something like, well that’s the preacher’s job, or I’m glad God didn’t call me to preach. God may not have called you to preach, but He has called you. God calls Christians to be preachers, teachers, deacons or missionaries, or singers. He calls Christians to many different works, but He doesn’t call us to be pew riders. He doesn’t call us to sit on our blessed assurance and do nothing. Salvation is not attained by works, it is attained by faith, but faith without works is dead, works will not get you saved, but without works you won‘t help anyone else get saved either. How does the old song go?

“ We’ll work ‘til Jesus comes, we’ll work ‘til Jesus comes” not we’ll sit back and twiddle our thumbs ‘til Jesus comes. No, God has not called any of us to be a pew rider.

Now for the call of God.

The call of God is threefold:

1. He has called us to repentance:

2 Peter 3:9 - The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Mark 2:17 - When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

When the disciples preached they preached repentance from John the Baptist to the Apostle Paul. Repentance is essential to forgiveness, unless you repent, you can’t be forgiven.

Repentance is not just giving God lip service, it is more than “ oops, sorry God” True repentance is when you give all your sin to God. Repentance is a deep sorrow for the sin you have committed, it is when you realize that you are a sinner and you are not worthy of the grace that God has shown you. When you realize that He sent His only Begotten Son to die on an old rugged cross just for you, it’s when you feel ashamed of the wicked life you have led and you realize you need forgiveness of those sins and you repent. When we repent of our sins, I mean truly repent, from the heart, the Bible says in

1 John 1:9

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

God has promised us in His word that if we will only confess our sins and repent, He will cleanse us. Once we confess those sins and repent, the Bible says they are cast in the sea of forgetfulness never to be remembered again. When we repent we become justified, do you know what it means to be justified, and it’s as just if I’d never sinned. It’s been said that God can do anything, but do you know that there are three things God can’t do?

He can not lie

He can not tempted with evil -

James 1:13

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:

He can’t remember your past sins. -

God will not remember your past sins, even when family and friends won’t let you forget them. As Christians we are so quick to point out the past mistakes of our brothers and sisters.

2. He has called us to dedication:

We as Christians tend to be dedicated to our jobs, our spouses, our children, our homes and even our churches. We show dedication each and every day in different parts of our lives. But we neglect God and don’t think twice about it. I mean, you wouldn’t lay out of work to watch the Daytona 500, would you? You wouldn’t neglect your children to catch an afternoon nap. You wouldn’t go for days without talking to your spouse. But we do all these things to God every week. We neglect Him in our prayer lives, we neglect Him in our church attendance. It seems like we tend to treat God like a spare tire, we only call on Him in an emergency. And for a lot of people the only time they come to church is when something goes wrong. God deserves our total dedication, and He demands our total dedication. There are too many fence riders in our churches today. Too many Christians are trying to play both sides, the want to come to church on Sundays, stand up and sing “ Oh How I Love Jesus” and then go to work on Monday and live like the devil. Well, you can’t have it both ways, you either live for Christ or you’re a hypocrite, plain and simple. Jesus said in the book of Matthew that you can’t serve two masters, you’ll love one and hate the other. It’s time to choose sides, it’s time to stand up and be the Christian God has called you to be. There are no undercover Christians in God‘s Army. It’s time to let this old world know where you stand. In the book of Joshua, the bible says to choose you this day, not tomorrow, not next week, not when you get older, but choose you this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!