Inherited Craftsmanship - Doing stuff that matches who we are
The Craftsman in God has created in us a longing to be craftsmen – to produce quality work and to achieve lasting results. Is God only interested in us applying ourselves in that way in ministry or mission situations? No. He is interested in the builder and the carpenter and the project manager and the administrator and the nurse and the teacher and the carer and the parent doing a job with skill and with passion and creating enduring outcomes.
The career that we train for, the aptitudes that we develop, the skills we acquire and the practical abilities that we hone are not incidental to God’s purposes. God does not just tolerate us plastering walls or designing bridges or nursing the sick or teaching a class, as long as we also stand on a soapbox or wear a sandwich board or use some of our disposable income to go on short-term missions. No, God takes an acute interest in our skill set for its own sake. He is interested in plastering excellence, in the rich education that comes to children from inspired teaching, in the healing qualities of nursing carers and both the complex calculations and the flowing lines that make up a bridge design and He calls people to do that stuff.
So, what is the purpose of such calls and who will they benefit? He wants the world to benefit from a huge variety of skills, exercised wherever He places one of His children. He also wants the worker to benefit from doing the work and from the opportunity to grow and develop in the doing. As to which aptitudes and skills are to be applied and by whom, wherever possible He intends the benefit to all parties to be enhanced by giving the task to someone whose aptitudes and personal passions are going to collide in the doing of it.
The starting point is to love God with all our heart, all our soul and all our strength and to sacrifice our lives on the altar of His plans and purposes and the specific callings He directs at us. His primary calling is to a ‘life in Christ’ and for us to exhibit a whole series of persistent attributes that are in keeping with that life. His secondary calling is to perform specific works and to undertake activities that capture our individuality and uniqueness and give us the opportunity to create high quality product and lasting results. It is inevitable that, if we follow His leading for our lives, we will find those callings spilling over into ministry and mission.
A person’s identity is built from who they are and what they do but God made each one of us with unique attributes and He is the only one who knows how to match the calls specifically to the person called. Our true identity is found, paradoxically, by being willing to lose the one we’ve built for ourselves but we will not find that place where natural aptitude coincides with personal passion unless we are doing stuff that matches who we are and what we were made for.
