Tag Archives: God’s call

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God’s timing

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 16-minute message. Or watch the video here on Facebook (the message starts about 25 minutes into the recording). Or read the text summary below.

Psalm 119:105 is a key text for Christian living: “Your word is a lamp for my feet, and a light on my path.” Not only does this verse point us to Scripture – the Word of God – as the source of light in life, but it also tells us something important about how God reveals Godself to us: in small increments.

We think of a lamp or light as a torch, providing a beam of light to shine up a path to see ahead to where we’re going. But the lamp the Psalmist writes about creates just a puddle of light around us – enough to see only the next step. To translate this verse into contemporary times, think of pointing your flashlight down at your feet rather than beaming ahead several meters.

Today’s world is premised on knowing the future and planning strategically and systematically. This is not bad – I do this all the time. But it is not the way God engages with humanity. God points us to a destination but typically does not provide us with the steps.

Let’s look, for example, at the story of Abraham and his descendants. In Genesis 12, God promises that he will make Abraham into a great nation and a blessing to all people. This promise is renewed several times over Abraham’s life. But he has his first child, Isaac, only around the age of 100 years! That’s a long time to wait for the most critical next step to becoming a great nation.

Then Isaac married only at age 40 and had his first son, Esau, at 60. And after Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, Jacob only had his first son, Reuben, at around 80 years. (Making up for lost time, Jacob had his other 11 sons within about half as many years!)

The point here is that there was little sign of God’s promise fulfilled across three generations from God’s promise to Abraham, covering perhaps 200 years. Where are the descents as many as stars in the sky and sand on the seashores? Abraham was given a destination, but he saw only a few steps of this over a very long time. Yet, throughout this time, Abraham was renowned for his deep faith that God was working out God’s purposes in him.

My journey to ordination is not as dramatic as Abraham’s, but it too was long in coming. I became a Christian at age 16, in 1984. Soon after, I began to feel a calling to become a minister. Though it persisted, I ignored it for nearly 20 years. In 2004, the call appeared again with an irresistible insistence. The following year, I started my BTh at TEEC and was licensed to preach. 12 years later, after much adversity, I was ordained deacon and the next year priest. Three years later, in 2021, I was appointed Rector at St Stephen’s. In total, the journey took around 35 years. That’s quite a long time to be journeying towards the fulfilment of a call to pastor a congregation. I knew the destination, but God took God’s good time to make it happen.

Jesus’ parable in Matthew 13 about the seeds sown in different soils tells a similar story. The fruitful crop emerged from seeds scattered on good earth. These seeds had to grow deep roots in healthy, nutritious soil to produce an abundant harvest. It takes time. Plant radishes if you want something quick, though most of us don’t like how they taste! Those who grow fruit trees or olives will know that farming is a long-term investment.

The lesson from these three readings (Genesis, Psalms and Matthew) seems to be that while we may have insight into God’s will for us, for our destination, the path from here to there is often long and opaque. We have to trust God – to trust his Word – that he will do what he says. But we should not expect quick answers.

Romans 8 reminds us that our minds must be governed by the Spirit and that we live in the realm of the Spirit. We do not live on the internet superhighway. We live our lives in the eternal life space of God. And that means being patient and faithful while God takes God’s good time to work out God’s purpose in our lives.

And so, dear ones, as we surrender the whole of ourselves to God, I encourage you to be patient with God and to have faith in God. Give God the space to do what God does best. Remember that the Lord says, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).

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A compelling calling

Click here to listen to this 16-minute message.

In 1 Corinthians 9:16, the Apostle Paul says that he is ‘compelled’ to preach the Gospel. This expression is fascinating, as it gives us some unique insights into Paul’s psychology and spirituality, namely, how he experienced God’s calling on his life. By gaining some insights into Paul’s experience of being called by God, we can gain some insights into our own experiences of being called.

I draw some parallels between Paul’s experience of a compelling calling and my own experience. I myself feel compelled to preach. And when opportunities to preach are lacking, I feel discombobulated and distressed. I think there is a difference between God’s call, which is an objective calling from God, and the compelling call, which is our subjective experience of God’s objective calling pressing upon us.

And so, I am calling on Christians to seek the compelling call – that sense of God’s call being insistent and persistent, irresistible and urgent.

Drawing on an expression used in Isaiah 40, I ask: Do you not know? Have you not heard?

  1. That you are deeply and passionately loved by God.
  2. That God has a unique purpose for you in the world, that draws on the whole of who you are.
  3. That the Holy Spirit of God equips and empowers us to live out this purpose, together with God and within a community of faith.
  4. That God desires us to have a deeper and more profound subjective experience of that compelling calling.
  5. And that God deeply and passionately loves the whole world, and desires to be reconciled to everyone, and wants us to participate with God in achieving that.

It is my prayer that we – Christians – become a more purposeful and invested community, working in partnership with God, to spread the Gospel message of the Kingdom of God.

In this message, I recite a poem, which has been meaningful to me for more than a dozen years. It is called ‘What is this seed?’, in a book by Edward Tyler entitled Prayers in Celebration of the Turning Year (1978).

What is this seed that thou has planted in me
that I must bring to fruit
or pass my life in sterile waste?

What is this gift that thou hast given me
that I must in turn pass on
or it will destroy me?

What is it you are asking me to do
that I must do
or know my life defeated?

I ask, in Christ’s name
Amen.