Why another book on ‘Calling’ had to be written – 2 Traps you must avoid
The majority of materials that exist on the subject of ‘Calling’, whilst they say some useful things, seem to fall into one or both of the following traps:
a) they completely omit from the argument some of the important, biblical aspects of calling and imply that the only valid calls are to Christian ministry or mission And/Or
b) they suggest that a person, by employing a certain methodology, can discover the call on his/her life for themselves and can then ‘be it’ or ‘do it’ or ‘go there’.
The first is a huge distortion of both God’s purposes and man’s uniqueness and the second is the exact opposite of the truth.
As to trap a), I think Os Guinness got it right in his book ‘The Call’, just over 20yrs ago – there are 4 main ways in which the concept of ‘a Call’ or ‘a Calling’ is used in the Bible:
calling out to capture someone’s attention;
calling someone or something by a name;
the ‘called out people’ – a calling out of the world and into the body of Christ;
the call to live by kingdom principles and to undertake specific tasks – the former taking precedence over the latter and the latter being built on the former.
Most books on ‘calling’, written from a Biblical standpoint, ignore all but point 3) and a bit of point 4). They highlight our calling to be disciples of Christ (which is right, because it’s the essential starting point) but then focus only on how we should use our gifts, skills, education, experience and time in ministry (to the body of Christ) and in mission (to the world).
They don’t acknowledge the full implication of God having created each person for specific purposes and that He is intimately concerned with our whole lives. Hence, most writing fails to provide any guidance as to how we understand what our gifts and skills are; how and why we as individuals are different from all those around us; how we can find things to do that utilise our passions and match our individuality; and what career or vocation we should pursue. In short, point 4) gets distorted, imposing limits on the list of ‘specific tasks’ to which we can legitimately be called and making it all about ministry and mission.
As to trap b), Rick Warren said, in ‘The Purpose Driven Life’, “I have read many books that suggest ways to discover the purpose of my life. All of them could be classified as ‘self-help’ books.” The self-help message is more prevalent now than when Rick wrote that nearly 20yrs ago. John the Baptist, when questioned about his own call, said - ‘A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him/her from heaven.’ [Jn 3v27 ESV]
We can muddle along by ourselves, use various tools to try and analyse our personal characteristics and then look for tasks that employ some or all of those characteristics. However, although using tools (e.g. to define personality type and/or motivated abilities) can be helpful and analysing how we got to where we are is a useful exercise, that kind of data can only provide clues.
God is the one who issues calls and dictates their content because He already knows everything about us – the strengths, the limitations, the experience, the triumphs and the failures, the aspirations and the doubts – and His calls are crafted to take us forward to ‘sonship’. His calls and commissions are also the mechanism that He uses to move us along the road to sonship i.e. to sanctify us.
Understanding God’s calls and commissions doesn’t happen by our effort – they can only be received by revelation.
