I’ve always struggled with not feeling ‘called to ministry,’ in a traditional sense anyway. When I was 18, I would have bet $1 Million that I would be a youth pastor or a community pastor by now because I believe, and still do to this day, that my Creator spoke to me at a specific moment one summer’s night in 2010 and said, “You have a purpose.”
Ever since then, I’ve been in a constant tug-of-war with life about what that purpose is and what qualifies as following God’s ‘purpose’ and feeling this “called to ministry” language that Christians tie to said feeling.
This morning, however, I read a piece in a book called ‘Exodus’ about a man named Bezalel. This is another guy that God said, “You have a purpose,” too, but also in a very non-traditional sense. According to the book, this is what God told him:
“I have called you by name, and I have filled you with the Spirit of God with the ability of knowledge, intelligence and craftsmanship to devise artistic designs and the ability to make all that I have commanded of you.”
That’s somewhat paraphrased, but what I took away from that was that Diving ‘calling’ and ‘purpose’ are not uniformed to what culture dictates. ‘Calling’ and ‘purpose’ are dictated by God to us, and sometimes we don’t even know what they mean, much less the culture around us; it’s that tug-of-war game of listening, following and being where you’re at with where you feel your own purpose, and I feel like we usually have a pretty good internal compass of when we’re in and out of that calling.
There’s a lot of comfort in knowing life’s calling for each of us all look different, but that those callings are never ‘less than’ another persons, even when they may look more divine or higher than our own. There is purpose in putting pen to paper, calling in creating calendar invites and divinity in driving to another meeting and that’s what I’m choosing to believe in today.
-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: God is in the gut.