*Our Awesome Calling

"Hello, sir! This is Jane Doe from XYZ Vacations! How are you today? I'm calling to let you know that you've won a free three-day, two-night vacation at one of our gorgeous new condominiums on the fabulous Florida coast! Isn't that fantastic? We know you'll love these two-bedroom, two-bath condos with all the amenities that you've come to expect of luxury vacation homes. And, of course, our property is centrally located among all the area's exciting venues for shopping, eating, entertainment, and sports! When can we expect you here?"

Most adults have received such a call. Even more likely, we have received an invitation like this in the mail, printed on glossy paper and adorned with rich, full-color images of beautiful beach scenes. We are told, in fine print, that we are on the hook for all other expenses, including travel costs and food, and that we will be required to endure a two- or three-hour "presentation" (read: sales pitch), during which all manner of inducements will be used to get us to buy a couple of weeks of annual rentals. It is a classic advertising gimmick.

Christianity includes a much nobler invitation to a good deal: God calls each person to a relationship with His Son, Jesus Christ, and thus to Him through Christ. Jesus speaks of this in John 6:44: "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day." He essentially repeats this in verse 65: "Therefore I said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father."

When we parse what He says in these verses, we learn some amazing things. First is the remarkable fact that the Father Himself initiates the relationship. The great, almighty, and omniscient God, Ruler of the universe, decides to invite or summon a particular human being into fellowship with His Son. He does not consider such a task to be beneath Him, but He takes a personal interest in each individual called into His church. He knows each of them long before they ever thought of Him (consider Psalm 139:13; Jeremiah 1:5; Romans 8:29).

Second, Jesus explicitly asserts that no one can come to Him except through the Father's calling. While most people, even nominal Christians, believe that they can find God if they seek Him long and hard enough, the Bible disagrees. David tells us in Psalm 14:2-3: "The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one." The apostle Paul repeats this in Romans 3:11, "There is none who seeks after God." Human beings are milling about in a world of profound religious confusion—worshipping thousands of gods of their own making, seeking gods to please themselves—but to know and worship the true God, they must be granted access by the Father.

Third, our Savior uses an interesting word to picture what God does to summon us: The Father "draws" us. "Draws" is translated from the Greek wordhelkúö, which in its most literal sense can also mean "to drag" (see Acts 16:19; 21:30; James 2:6)—and with some of us, it may well have happened with us kicking and screaming! A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament,Third Edition (BDAG) provides a helpful nuance of this word's meaning:

To move an object from one area to another in a pulling motion, draw, with implication that the object being moved is incapable of propelling itself or in the case of pers. [sic] is unwilling to do so voluntarily, in either case with implication of exertion on the part of the mover. . . .

This explanation reinforces the points we have already seen. When the Father initiates His calling, the individual does not have the capability to move himself into a relationship with Him, nor would he do so voluntarily, being at enmity with God (see Romans 8:7). God, therefore, must make the effort to reach out to the individual and open the way for fellowship with Him and His Son. But how does He do this?

In Hosea 11:3-4, God speaks of His treatment of Israel, "I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by their arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I drew them with gentle cords, with bands of love, and I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck." In a similar vein, Paul writes in Romans 11:5, "Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace." Here, the apostle uses the term "election" in a similar sense as Jesus speaks of few being chosen (Matthew 20:16; 22:14), an idea parallel to being drawn to Christ. The Father elects or selects only a few to understand the truth and have a relationship with Him and His Son, and He does this out of love by His grace. That is, His calling is a freely given gift; nothing that we are or have done compels God to draw us to Christ.

God's calling, then, is by grace, but what does He do to call a person? John 8:43, where Jesus is arguing with some Jews, provides a clue: "Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word." They were physically hearing His words, but they were incapable of spiritually comprehending His meaning. Yet, converted Christians can understand Him. Thus, part of the miracle of God's calling is that, through His Spirit (I Corinthians 2:10-16), the Father opens the mind to spiritual understanding, and as Paul explains it, "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17).

In this way, He gives us the gift of faith (Ephesians 2:8), by which we can truly believe and then act upon what He says. We can see this in the calling of Lydia, whom Paul met in Philippi: "The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul" (Acts 16:14), and she was baptized soon thereafter.

The Bible tells us that God usually chooses the salt of the earth—the foolish, the weak, the base, and the despised of the world (I Corinthians 1:27-28), but our goal is to become "a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light" (I Peter 2:9). In other words, we have not been called to remain "just as we are." We have a "heavenly" (Hebrews 3:1) and "a holy calling" (II Timothy 1:9), one that we must "walk worthy of" (Ephesians 4:1).

Our calling is no gimmick. The Father has summoned, invited, us to the greatest purpose any human being can be asked to participate in: "to be conformed to the image of His Son" (Romans 8:29), to prepare to be firstfruits of His spiritual harvest (James 1:18; Revelation 14:4), to be kings and priests in His Kingdom (Revelation 1:6; 5:10), and to be the Bride of Christ (Revelation 19:7-9). As the author of Hebrews urges us, "See that you do not refuse Him who speaks" (Hebrews 12:25).

Wisdom for the Young (Part Five)

How does a young person seek God? Some people, having grown up in certain evangelical circles, have an overly sentimental opinion of how an individual should come to God. Many Protestant churches have fostered the idea that a person must come before the altar at the front of the church and "give his heart to the Lord." This kind of emotional, altar-call conversion, many believe, is the quintessence of how seeking God works. The sad thing is that, biblically, it is not the way it works.

Seeking God is a personal, private matter between God and the individual, but the result of the person's quest will be publicly manifested in the way he lives. That is, his conduct will change, and people will notice. He will, as John the Baptist preached, "bear fruits worthy of repentance" (Matthew 3:8).

At the outset, we must realize that seeking God actually does not begin with us. God must initiate a relationship through His calling, as John 6:44 says. A person may sincerely think he is looking for God, but He will not be found by anyone unless He first extends an invitation to salvation and opens the mind to His truth. However, children of church members already have a relationship with God, as they have been sanctified—set apart or made holy—by their parent(s) relationship(s) with Him (see I Corinthians 7:14). They have a kind of "automatic calling," a unique opportunity to seek God in their youth.

Once a person clears this initial stage, what should happen? In Isaiah 51:1-2, 7, God says:

Listen to Me, you who follow after righteousness, you who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the hole of the pit from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you; for I called him alone, and blessed him and increased him. . . . Listen to Me, you who know righteousness, you people in whose heart is My law. . . .

This passage provides a short outline of what seeking God is and how we should go about doing it. In the first verse, God speaks to "you who seek the LORD," which parallels the phrase immediately before it, "you who follow after righteousness." Parallel phrases like this often define one another. Thus, one who seeks God pursues righteousness. In other words, a person who wants a relationship with Him will do what He says. When an individual practices godly living, he is seeking the Lord.

God follows this with some advice: "Look to the rock from which you were hewn," which has a double meaning. In the Bible, the Rock is often a symbol of Jesus Christ (see I Corinthians 10:4), so a major way that we learn how to seek righteousness is by learning and following the example of Christ. The second meaning, emphasized here, comes out in His mention of Abraham and Sarah in verse 2. He counsels us to examine the lives of our righteous spiritual forebears to see how they followed God and lived out their faith.

Later, in Isaiah 51:7, He speaks to those who have put His law in their hearts. This occurs when a person studies God's Word and burns the truth that he finds there into his character by putting it to use in the circumstances of his life. This verse contains another parallelism in which He equates knowing righteousness (that is, understanding godly conduct) with having His law written in the heart. These things are possible only within a deepening relationship with God.

Isaiah 55 contains, as the New King James Version styles it, "An Invitation to Abundant Life":

Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you—the sure mercies of David. . . . Seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:1-3, 6-7)

Once we begin following God, these are the next steps to take. Seeking the Lord requires more than just listening and learning. He says that we must call upon Him in prayer, so that we can get to know Him. We need to confess our sins to Him, so that we can seek forgiveness. We are also required to repent, that is, turn from our sins and turn toward His good and right way.

Notice that He says, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts." God targets the sin in us on two levels: our "way"—our exterior conduct and behavior—and our "thoughts"—our interior attitudes and motivations. Both must be examined and purified. God says that, if we do this, He will have abundant mercy, and the relationship will leap forward.
Zephaniah 2:1-3 adds a sense of urgency to seeking a relationship with God:

Gather yourselves together, . . . O undesirable nation, before the decree is issued, or the day passes like chaff, . . . before the day of the LORD'S anger comes upon you! Seek the LORD, all you meek of the earth, who have upheld His justice. Seek righteousness, seek humility. It may be that you will be hidden in the day of the LORD'S anger.

God advises, "Seek Me now! Don't delay! You don't know how much time you have left!" We believe that Christ's return is fast approaching, but we cannot say exactly when, and we certainly do not know when we will draw our last breath. Thus, God tells us not to procrastinate when it comes to having a relationship with Him. Seek Him now, before the dark days come.

"For thus says the LORD to the house of Israel: ‘Seek Me and live'" (Amos 5:4). God is not really speaking about physical life, but about the abundant life and eternal life. In verses 14-15, He commands: "Seek good and not evil, that you may live. So the LORD God of hosts will be with you, as you have spoken. Hate evil, love good; establish justice in the gate. It may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph."

The church is the remnant that God has called out of this world to follow Him and live, so that He can continue to be gracious to us all the way to the Kingdom of God. And He wants, not just young people, but everyone in the church to seek Him and live. The youth, however, have a golden opportunity to say with the psalmist, "O God, You have taught me from my youth; and to this day I declare Your wondrous works" (Psalm 71:17).