In him and through faith in him we approach God with freedom and confidence. (Ephesians 3:12)
Don’t you love it when God confronts you with the depths of your hypocrisy? Doesn’t it just make you feel good? Last week I met with a member of our staff who was struggling in his heart because he has so many aspirations and can’t seem to figure out how to accomplish them all. My response: The great problem in your life is that you have not yet fully embraced your calling. Aspirations are great, but the call of God is all-important. You need to begin to say ‘yes’ to God every day. Once you embrace his calling upon your life, the anxiety will lift. I felt really good about this meeting, until I was in prayer the next morning and God spoke this word to me: Benjamin, now its time for you to embrace your calling, because until now you have resisted it.
I was flabbergasted! I have resisted my calling? If anything, I have embraced my calling. In fact, I have historically rejected and resisted opportunities that would have caused me to neglect my calling. In my senior year of high school I was offered a recording contract and world tour. God told me not to take it, so I turned it down. I had the opportunity to go to various high profile music schools, but I decided to go to Bible College in order to prepare myself for ministry. God called me to plant a church in Emeryville, a city that is a graveyard for churches, and in which it is virtually impossible to plant and grow a church, purchase buildings, and build a world-wide ministry. Yet, I have time and again rejected opportunities to occupy buildings outside of Emeryville at a fraction of the price. Why? Because God called me to Emeryville, and until he says otherwise, I’ll be laboring here!
Resisted my calling? I have paid the price to embrace it. Where he leads me, I follow. What he feeds me, I swallow. I have worked hard to be submitted, obedient, expedient, and pliable in the hands of God. So how can God say that I have resisted my calling?
Then God took me back to my freshman year of Bible College. In that year I received two identical prophetic words on two different occasions from two different individuals who had no knowledge that the other had spoken this word to me. At the time the word baffled me, but now I have complete understanding. This was the word: Benjamin, the Lord says that you are not called to the ministry. You are called to fellowship with God. You will do much ministry throughout your life, but know that ministry is not your primary calling. You are called to fellowship with God.
Suddenly everything became clear. The calling that I had neglected was the calling to fellowship with God. God began to show me that I have somehow made my fellowship with God a secondary pursuit . . . something that empowers my primary pursuit, which is ministry. God is now commanding me to flip the script: fellowship with God must become my primary pursuit, and ministry must become the by-product.
What I’m learning is that saying yes to God is a life-long endeavor. Its so easy to drift from the center and begin to live life in the margins, even if our lives are wholly devoted to serving God and doing his will. Approaching God with freedom and confidence is often simply about the decision to say yes.
So what caused me to drift? You guessed it: Anti-crack! I have had such incredible seasons of pursuing and drawing close to God. But all it takes is for me to miss one day . . . sleep in one morning . . . watch a movie at night instead of meditating on Scripture . . . and my anti-crack addiction begins to pull me away from the presence of God. But today I’m reclaiming my place in the presence. How bout you?
