God is Faithful in Our Calling(s)

1 Samuel 7:12-8:7

Oops

Hi, my name is Caleb Dixon. I am in the final year of my MDiv. In keeping with this year’s theme of testimony I’m going to share a bit of my story.

I am a Pastor’s kid. Also, my Dad was a Pastor’s kid. So was his. And his… you get the picture, we go back 5 generations. Pretty much my whole life I believed that it was my ‘calling’ to be a Pastor and carry on the family legacy.

I always heard a saying about pastor’s kids: you either go off the rails, or you stay in the church long enough to become the pastor.

I didn’t have one of those “wild rebellious stories of the high school party life”.

I finished the kids program at our church and began to help lead it.

I finished high school and immediately became a youth leader.

I was involved with the worship ministry a month after I picked up a ukulele in grade 9.

I was “the church kid”, I knew the answers (and wasn’t shy about it)

From as long as I can remember it seemed like I knew exactly where I was headed.

The summer between grade 11 and grade 12, people started asking (like they typically do) ‘what are you going to do when you graduate?’, and like every good Christian kid in the maritimes I responded with ‘I’m going to Crandall’.

Matthew Wheaton had come to my high school some time in May or June of my grade 11 year, and I was convinced that I was going there.

I wore all of their merch.

I talked about it all the time.

I applied and was accepted.

And then in the fall of grade 12 I went to a retreat called Potential Impact (some of you may have heard of it) CBAC put it on for grade 11 and 12 students to spend some time trying to find their ‘calling’.

There I talked to Catherine Cole, heard about all of the benefits that Acadia would be for me (yay for half off tuition entrance scholarships and living in my parents basement). And put in an application for a BTh at Acadia.

All the while I figured some day I would be a pastor, I loved church, I knew my Bible, I mean, what else do you really need to become a pastor anyways?…

I went through my BTh.

I got married

And quickly realized I needed a job.

So I started to supply preach a little bit.

I wanted a job at my home church but there weren’t any positions available at the time.

So when a mentor of mine told me that he was going to Truro and asked me to supply preach for him for a week, I volunteered to be the pastor at His church, Canning Baptist.

I didn’t really put a ton of thought into it.

I maybe prayed about it once before deciding to do it.

I didn’t ask many questions about the congregation.

I had preached their twice, and that was all I needed to know to become their pastor at the age of 21.

Well it didn’t take long for me to realize that it wasn’t a great fit.

There are lovely people there, but my only experience was with youth, and their youngest member was 70.

I hadn’t taken a preaching course yet, so reading a chapter or more of scripture and then retelling it without much application, telling them something about the Greek because I briefly looked at a chart on Logos, and saying something to the effect of ‘and this is why we should be like Jesus’… was about as good as my sermons got.

I did some visitation, but had no idea what to say to any of them.

I had never led communion before so I improvised off of the same 1 Corinthians passage every month, and was the only one there who played an instrument so I just walked over to them and handed them their communion in silence.

I had only ever attended a church of about 400-500 people, their congregation was smaller than any small group I’d been a part of.

Small churches have different problems, needs, and ways of doing things than larger churches, which was way out of my element.

At New Minas I could count on my hands the number of times (in 20 years) we did a hymn in the traditional style.

At Canning they pretty much only knew traditional hymns.

Needless to say the whole experience was a culture shock.

In the beginning I had agreed to try it out for six months and then we would reassess.

Within three I knew I couldn’t be what they needed, and so at six months we decided to leave.

I stayed for two more, and then we went back to New Minas.

I left about as well as I had been their pastor.

Ugh

During the process of leaving and following it I kept asking myself why did this not work out?

Did I not like the work of ministry? Did I find it too difficult?

That didn’t seem to be it, though I didn’t start out as a very good preacher I did enjoy it most of the time.

Was I just lazy and unexperienced? Just a deadbeat who couldn’t swing it?

I hope that wasn’t true, I try not to shy away from hard work. And I do put effort in in many other places, so it didn’t seem to be that.

Was it really just that the church and I were a bad fit?

Although there were some giant learning curves for me, I did really get along with the people there. They are really lovely people, and some of them had begun to feel like extra grandparents to us.

Was I just not called to be a pastor?

This was one that stayed with me for a while. I couldn’t get past the fact that becoming a pastor meant permanently leaving New Minas, the church I had grown up in, and wanted to be back at the whole time we were away.

And so I kept pressing into that, why did I feel like I couldn’t leave New Minas?

Why did this desire to stay stand directly in the way of what I had said I was called to? Which of these was I mistaken about? My vocation or my location?

Aha

What did you notice about the 1 Samuel passage?

I’ll tell you what I initially noticed in it when I was reading it for my personal devotions a bit over a week ago.

Samuel didn’t have a straightforward calling.

And for those that know his story we’re like wait… what?! what do you mean?!

Him being directly called by God as a child is pretty much the only part of his story that we all consistently remember.

But I immediately noticed that Samuel had several vocations.

Verse 15 shows that Samuel was a judge.

Verse 17 shows he was a priest.

Later in chapter 9, Saul refers to him as a prophet.

We almost have an archetype for the offices of Christ… but that’s probably a different sermon…

He also served in several locations.

Verse 16 and 17

“He went on a circuit year by year to Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpah. Then he would return to (his home) Ramah,”.

The man clearly had his hands full.

Many of us also end up with a lot of roles.

Sometimes it feels like we make a mess of things.

That we drop the ball when we try to do too many things.

We’re in good company.

In many ways its clear that God was with Samuel and that Samuel was faithful to what God had called Him to.

But in one key way he fails, or at least seems to.

He fails his calling as a father.

Just like Eli had before Him.

Eli’s sons were struck dead because they did not living up to their family’s calling faithfully, and Samuel was raised up in their stead.

The beginning of chapter 8 shows that Samuel also has failed to raise up faithful children.

I’m not a parent I don’t know yet how hard it is to raise your children well.

In this passage it’s clear that Samuel didn’t succeed in raising his sons to follow God.

We’re not told how hard he tried.

Koowon Kim (the author of the Asian Bible Commentary on 1 Samuel) suggests that Samuel did at least try to raise them well, his sons names (Joel and Abijah) respectively mean ‘the LORD is God’ and ‘the LORD is my Father’.

Children’s decisions do not always signify a problem with their Father. But it is clear that the end result is that Samuel’s sons do not understand justice.

And this leads to the people of Israel recognizing that his sons are not fit to be the next judge-priest-prophet hybrid leaders, instead the people ask for a king.

Samuel rightly understands that this will mean problems for them later on. But the narrative progresses and the people get the king they want.

What if his sons had followed him?

Would it have saved Israel from their division and fall during the period of the kings?

It’s hard to say.

The point I want to drive home here is that we all have many callings, and we’re not always faithful in all of them.

Some are called to be pastors.

Some are called to lead nations.

Some are called to lead households and families.

Some are called to be parents.

But we all share one calling.

The call to be with God, and to be faithful because He’s already been faithful to us.

The beginning of this passage mentions Samuel raising an ‘Ebenezer’.

A literal rock for the people to look and be reminded

Of how God has been faithful,

Of how God remains faithful,

And of how He promises to always be faithful.

Even when Eli, and Samuel, and especially their sons, were not faithful

God continued to be faithful, to work through both their successes and their mistakes.

Whee

This is the good news of the gospel. God is faithful and continues to use us despite our mistakes.

From the very beginning of Genesis, God has been commited to living with and working with and through humans.

Our callings, every single one of them, are much less complex than we often make them.

While I was stressing and asking if I had somehow ruined God’s plan for my life. I made my calling seem much more complex than it really was.

I’m sure that Samuel was also stressed at times and felt like things were complex, knowing that because his sons did not follow after him that the nation was moving towards something that would ultimately destroy them.

But our calling is simple. John Mark Comer does a fantastic job summarizing it in his new book Practicing the Way.

Our call is to Be With Jesus. To Become Like Jesus. And then to Do like Jesus did.

We so often worry about the vocation of our calling. The location of our calling. Or our motivation in answering our calling.

But our calling is simple. Be With Jesus.

That’s the story of the gospel. Jesus came to us, to call us to come be with Him and to invite others to be with Him.

As we become His disciples, as we apprentice under Him our call is then to become like Him.

He’s way more concerned about our heart in the vocation and location that we’re in, than He is about the vocation or location themselves.

We are called to do lots of things, and to be faithful in those, but we don’t have to worry about getting them wrong because God works through us for His good either way.

And as we spend time with Him, and become like Him it will be apparent that our calling is to show Him to people where we are right now.

I am a youth leader, and I have the privilege every week of leading a small group of grade 11 and 12 boys and of mentoring them.

My calling is to faithfully point them to Jesus and invite them to come with me and for us to spend time with Jesus together.

I am a worship leader on Sundays, for our youth group on Wednesdays, here in chapel, and in several other places.

My calling is to faithfully use my gifts to point people to Jesus through music.

I am a husband.

My calling is to faithfully love my wife, to spend time with Jesus together, and to let our relationship point both us and those around us to Jesus.

Someday I hope to be a Father.

My calling as a Father will be to faithfully point my kids to Jesus through spending time with Him together as a family.

Yeah

Not every calling is vocational.

Not every calling is locational.

There are many different callings that we are all entrusted with.

The part I was getting wrong about calling, is that our first calling is to be with Jesus, to be in His presense, and to become like Him and then He’ll call us to doing specific things.

While I was stressing about whether or not I was really called, whether I had ruined my calling, whether I had been wrong about calling all along.

I had neglected to simply spend time with Jesus.

By stressing about the future I was failing to be faithful in what I was called to right now.

Maybe you’re in the same boat I was, you’re not sure what you’re doing after you’re done here at ADC.

That’s ok.

Be With Jesus. Become Like Jesus. Do Like Jesus.

That calling belongs to all of us.

Be faithful to what you’re called to right now. Take time to Be with Jesus.

Become Like Him. Genuninely show His love, grace, justice, mercy, compassion, and hope to people here on campus.

Then do like He did. Go take care of the people you have in your care right now. Be faithful spouses, care takers, parents, pastors, congregants, leaders, followers, teachers, professors, students.

Where you are right now. God is calling you.

He’s calling you to faithfully spend time with Him.

To become more like Him.

And to show Him to others.

I’m not saying we don’t have other callings.

We all do and those are important too.

But right now, this is God’s calling for each of us.

And it’s a really good calling.