You Are Called
Sometimes the Call Gets Delayed –
the Story of Abraham & Sarah
Acts 7:1-8
1 Then the high priest asked Stephen, "Are these
accusations true?"
2 To this he replied: "Brothers
and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham
while he was still in
4"So he left
the land of the Chaldeans and settled in
New International Version Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society
You are called by God. That means you have been picked to be on
God’s team. Think about that. God deems that you have some value in the
building of an eternal kingdom. Imagine
being an 18 year old football player and Coach Pete Carroll of the USC Trojan
football team sent you a letter offering you a scholarship to play on his
team. What would you do on the night
that you got his letter? I would hope you’d
celebrate!
I remember traveling out here on Mother’s
Day 2005 to preach for your Pulpit
Nominating Committee and afterwards chairman Rick Needles telling me that his committee
wanted to call me as your pastor. I
didn’t need a jet to get back to
You are called by God. You’ve been picked to be on God’s team. The only problem is that a lot of people miss
reading the memo. You don’t know that
you were a high draft pick. God drafted
you for his service.
You
are Called is a seven
chapter memo informing you that God has picked you for his service. You
are Equipped will be
the second part of this study and will be out in early January of 2007. When God calls you for specific tasks, God
always equips you with exactly what you need to do that job. If you’ve given your heart to Jesus, you have
a God given Holy Spirit gift or gifts that will enable you to do that task. We will help you to find what that those
spiritual gifts are by giving you an inventory of the gifts that will identify
your gifts. You are Sent will be the third part of this trilogy and will be out
sometime in the spring 0f ’07 to show specific places and tasks that God sends
people to who have been called.
This is going to be an important trilogy
in the future development of our church.
As we will see in this first series a church is made up of nothing more
than God’s team of chosen players. No
one on God’s team is a bench warmer. No
one. We may disqualify ourselves from
playing for awhile like my pastor friend who had an affair with a married
parishioner and now sits on the bench while everyone involved in his sordid
tale heals. But someday God may put him
back in the game again.
As we will see every church has a
specific calling because it is made up of people with a calling. The growing, dynamic churches in the world
are the ones where the members know their calling, are equipped for that
calling and being empowered to fulfill their calling are sent into the world to
do their calling. That’s a church with a
purpose.
You are called and you have a purpose. Even my (Larry) soon to be 88 year old mother
with her spinal discs collapsing, her feet swelling, and her mind struggling to
stay focused has a calling. For the
first time in her life she’s going to a weekly Bible study and learning what it
means to be a follower of Christ. She
has a calling.
You are called, equipped and sent. To help you understand what it means to have
a calling we will examine the call of a different biblical character in each
chapter until the last study which will examine the call of a particular
church. There are a lot of examples of
calls in the Bible that you’ll be able to look up on your own besides these six. There are at least three factors consistent in all six of the calls that we’ll
look at. By identifying these three consistent
factors you might be able to better identify your own calling. Let’s get started.
We’ll
Go Pretty Soon – A Delayed Departure
Our first case study call involves a man
named Abraham along with his wife Sarah.
Abraham or Abram as he was originally called received a call from
God. Much is written in the Scriptures
about Abram. He is considered the father
of both Judaism and Islam. In Acts 7:1-8
the first Christian deacon in the early church after Christ’s resurrection,
Stephen was being accused by Jewish religious leaders of teaching what would be
considered today anti-Semitism. These
Jewish leaders thought following Christ was not consistent with Jewish
teachings. So Stephen begins his defense of a Jew following Jesus with the
father of Judaism, Abraham.
Stephen pointed out that God appeared to
Abram while he was still in
27 This is
the history of Terah's family. Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor, and
31 Terah took his son Abram, his daughter-in-law Sarai, and
his grandson
Abram’s father, Terah took his family from
If you take Stephen’s testimony that
Abraham received his call to go to
We do not know for certain why the call
got delayed.
2 Joshua
said to the people, "This is what the LORD, the God of
Jewish tradition refers to Terah as an
idol maker.
This was the heritage of the family God
chose to make the father of his people.
They received a vision from God while in
In
A
Hindrance to Discovering God’s Call
The biggest hindrance to discovering the
call of God is settling where you are.
God says “I have called you to a new thing” but we’re so comfortable
with where we are that we settle. Can
you imagine those of you who fought in
Yet that’s exactly what a lot of
Christians do with God’s call. What
difference does your call make in your choices?
I (Larry) was once a volunteer chaplain in the Santa Clara County
Correctional Facilities in
What’s important to realize is that God
did not choose to call Abram or his family because of anything they had
done. God doesn’t sit in heaven and sift
through the kindest, nicest, prettiest, most likely to succeed person and pick
them for a calling. Instead God calls us
as we are, where we are, who we are.
It’s up to us to leave our old place and go where God calls us. But that’s the hard part.
Look
at Acts 7: 3 again “'Leave your country and your people,' God said, 'and go to
the land I will show you.” That’s
the first factor in a call.
“Leave.” In Abram’s case that
meant to leave geographically. Sometimes
that means to leave emotionally. Alcohol
when abused is a bondage that keeps people from following God’s call. The first thing that God says to you is leave
your bottle and your drink. Pornography
is another thing that will delay your call.
God says to you “leave your pornography and your smut”.
I once officiated at a wedding in my
last church for a promising young man from southern
The second factor in Abram’s call was 'and go to the
land I will show you.” “Go”
is the operative word here. It is one
thing to leave your past but it has to be replaced with something new or the
old will return. That’s what repentance
means. Repentance means to realize what
you’ve been doing is wrong, to stop and then turn around in another direction.
You are called by God to something
really, really good. You’ve been chosen
to be on his team. God believes that you
will make a significant contribution to the development of his kingdom. But to know that call you have to leave and
to go.
Then
we read in Acts 7:4-5
4
After the death
of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. 5He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground.
But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the
land, even though at that time Abraham had no child.”
Remember these words
“But God promised him…” That’s the third
factor in God’s call. “Leave.” “Go.”
“God promised.” God never calls
us to something that he doesn’t provide for.
Abram was like most people who first move to
That’s the call of
God in a nutshell. On Tuesday August 8
Charles Magnuson, our music director, came in to see me in the afternoon. I could tell he was a bit nervous when he
handed me his well written letter of resignation. In essence the letter said that God was
calling him to leave where he was at the First Presbyterian Church and to go to
the land of teaching students. The
promise that he heard was that God would provide for him. At the time Charles didn’t have enough
students to support he and Ellen on but he had the promise from God and by
faith he resigned. Within the next two
weeks over a dozen students signed up to learn trombone from Charles, an
instrument that he hadn’t even thought about teaching but was qualified to do
so. His schedule of clients overflowed
in those weeks following his public announcement of leaving that no one could
have even imagined.
Meanwhile the next
day after meeting with Charles I made a phone call to Barbara Reed on the
Personnel Committee informing her of Charles’ decision. She in turn called Bob Vieten also on the
Personnel Committee to inform him of Charles.
Bob immediately placed a call to Jeff Rickard, the music director at his
alma mater the
We had to work double
time to form a search committee, write up a job description, come up with a
salary package, interview the candidate, call his references, meet with the
Finance Ministry and finally with our Session.
Everywhere we went we got nothing but green lights to hire this
candidate. He agreed to not only come
but also to start September 1 so that we could have some weeks to get ready for
the transition while Charles was still with us until September 10.
On June 5 of 2005
when you called me to be your pastor, that calling meant I had to leave
Leave, go and God
will fulfill his promise. But stay, stop
and I think you’ll miss or at least delay God’s promises. That’s the choice you have today. That’s the choice the First Presbyterian
Church of Hemet has today. We are called
to something really, really good. Let’s
discover it together. Are you willing to leave where you are
now and trust God by going to a new situation?
That’s the question to reflect on this week.
If you have not yet
repented, that is turn from your sins and turned to Jesus Christ I urge you to
do that now. Pray a little prayer to God
that says something like…
Dear God, I believe in you but I believe that I have
sinned against you. I am in need of
forgiveness. I accept your forgiveness
in Jesus Christ and ask him into my life to be my savior and lord. I give you my life. Amen.
If that’s your prayer
you have received forgiveness in Jesus Christ.
He has come to dwell in your life and to help change you to be like
him. Spend some time each day talking to
him and reading the Bible. Start with
the Gospel of John and ask God to show you his call for your life. It will be a great adventure.
Discussion
Guide
What do you think it means to have
a “calling”?
Describe some times you or someone
you have known had what seemed to be a divine calling.
What do you think would be the
most difficult thing for you in a calling from God? (i.e. hearing the call, leaving your comfort
zone)
What is your calling from God
right now?
Daily Bible
Monday I Samuel 1:1-20
What was Hannah’s problem?
How did God take care of Hannah’s
problem?
Tuesday I Samuel
What did Hannah do with her son?
Why did she do this?
Wednesday I Samuel 2:1-11
How might this prayer of Hannah be
a model of prayer for you?
Thursday I Samuel
What were
the sons of Eli the priest doing wrong?
What did
the Lord think of what they were doing?
Friday I Samuel
Contrast the priest’s sons and Samuel
Why would the priest’s sons have a difficult time
hearing the call of God?
Saturday I Samuel 3:1-10
Why do you think it took three times for Samuel to
realize whose voice he was hearing?
What did God do for Samuel after he confronted the priest?