Have you ever heard someone say, God called me to do this? We look at them in awe and a little skepticism. Then, we wonder, did God call them, or did they eat some lousy chicken and hallucinated the call?
Now, imagine if you suddenly received a call on your cell phone. “Ring! Ring! Ring! And imagine on the screen it says, God is calling.
I would think some would laugh and wonder who had the nerve to do such a thing. Some people would ignore it, believing it was a prank or solicitation. A few may answer the phone hoping to receive God’s blessings. Still, others will answer God’s call, believing He had work for them to accomplish.
The Final Book
The final book in the Old Testament is Malachi. God uses this prophet to confront complacent people waiting for the Messiah to return, deliver, and bless them.
The priests and the people thought if they kept their formal rituals, this loving relationship with God would grow and continue no matter how they lived. Instead, God uses Malachi as a personal and direct call to rebuke and remind the priests and people that the Lord’s coming would be in judgment to purify, purge, and refine.
The Questions
So the same questions that the Hebrew people had to answer back in 400 B.C. are the same questions people have had to ponder throughout history.
- Will I answer the call?
- Will I ignore the call?
- How will I answer the call?
- Will I answer His call with fear and doubt?
- Will I answer His call with excitement and anticipation?
Seven Callings
Here is something of note: we are not answering one call; there are seven calls through the prophet Malachi to the people back in the day and all of us today.
We are to respond to His love.
- We are to respond to His love (1:1-5).
- We are to live an authentic faith (1:6-14).
- We are to develop a more profound love for His glory (2:1-9)
- We are to be loyal to His covenant and the marriage covenant (2:10-16).
- We are to trust in His unchanging, perfect, and just character (2:17-3:6).
- We are to serve and give faithfully (3:7-18).
- We are to take inventory of our spiritual lives (4:1-6).
That’s A lot!
Okay, I don’t know about you, but that seems like a lot! Let’s face it; His call is not easy. It takes guts to answer the call, especially when He asks us to be transparent, moldable, and authentic with Him and others in seven ways. Our Lord will stretch us further than we may feel comfortable going, but in the end, those who answer it have never been disappointed.
Join Me
That’s good enough for me, and if you are reading this blog, it must be good enough for you. So join me as we answer God’s call together in The Harbor Church’s new series, God Is Calling, starting on Sunday, June 27th at 10:00 am. I believe God’s best waits for all of us!
David Towner is the author of Today Is My Favorite Day and has been the senior pastor of The Harbor Church in Odessa, Fl, for twenty-three years. He is married to his wife, Tonya. They have three beautiful girls and four awesome grandsons.
