Ca: Calling

In this Elemental series, Each week we are going to look at different elements. When these four elements combine, it creates a reaction that spurs on mission in our lives. When we are elemental people, we move beyond mere passion to become people on-mission who change the world.

For this series, we're going to look at the one person who changed the world more than any other person in the early church. That person is the apostle Paul. Paul’s story is an excellent picture of how calling is the first element when you want to change the world, because it shows us that life change should lead to world change.

We first meet him in Scripture in Acts 7:56, as he held the coats for the religious leaders who were stoning a Christian named Stephen.

In Acts 8:3, we see Paul went on to become one of the Jewish leaders of his day, and as he did, he persecuted those he saw as straying away from the Jewish faith to become followers of Jesus.

As a result, Christians in Jerusalem scattered away from Jerusalem, and the Christian faith began to spread.

Acts 9:1-22

Every good hero has an archenemy.

Your archenemy is the person who persecutes, battles, and bothers the hero at every opportunity. They want something opposed to what the hero wants.

v1-2)Paul (then known as Saul) was on the warpath against Christians. Wherever he could find them, he had them arrested, tried, and even executed for their beliefs. There was no greater enemy of Christians in his day.

v3-9) Paul's life was turned upside down. As Paul met Jesus and realized that his view of things was utterly backward, his life changed. No longer would Paul persecute Christians. Instead, now he shared the truth about Jesus with the whole world.

v10-14) Ananias thinks the same way we do, “have you heard their reputation?”, “Can God really save someone like that?”

v15-18) Paul's calling was basically to be Christianity's first missionary and to focus his efforts on letting non-Jewish people know about Christ.

v19-22) Paul began to live out this calling. He went to the synagogue in Damascus and preached about how Jesus is the Son of God. This was a shocking turn of events, both because of the message itself and because of the messenger. The man who had once been Christianity's archenemy was now out to change the world as Jesus had called him to do.

Application

Any mission that we undertake needs to be founded in the ways God has changed our lives. Otherwise, our mission will have a short-term burst of passion but not a long-term foundation.

Our calling will take a couple form:

First, there is the calling that every Christian has. Jesus summed up this calling when He talked about the greatest commandment–to love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matt. 22:37-40)

Second, we are all called to go into the whole world and preach the gospel (Matt. 28:18-20)

No matter who we are or what our calling might be, all of us who have chosen to follow Christ need to embrace these callings

But as we live out this general calling, we will discover that God chooses different ones of us to do this .in different ways. Paul preached to Gentiles; Peter the Jews; Bonhoeffer facing down the Nazis, etc

Our specific calling should match up with our general calling, but can take many different forms.

To discover our calling, we need to examine ourselves.

What spiritual gifts has God given us? What natural talents and abilities do we have? What unique opportunities are before us now, or might be before us in the future?

As we look at these things, we will start to discover what specific calling God has given us.

Sometimes, a specific calling is a lifetime calling that we will have to work on for months or even years. At other times, it may be a prompting from the Holy Spirit that we need to act on in an instant.

As we learn to listen to God’s voice, we can discover God has changed our lives, and we are called to change the world because life change should lead to world change.

God never leaves us how he found us. Instead, He wants the change inside of us to have a ripple effect outside of us.

Pray: “Lord, change us from the inside out and let that change cause an impact to those around us.”