God Calling?

"He has a Japan-shaped space in his heart. He is just waiting for God to call him to Japan." said a loving missionary mum of her son recently.

It's time for him to stop waiting, and get going!

We surround the idea of God's call with such murky myth and mystery sometimes that God's call becomes a vehicle for:

1. Changing our mind. "I said I'd never ..., but God had different ideas ..."
2. Inaction. "I would love my neighbour, but God hasn't called me to yet ..."
3. Doing our own thing: "I really hate latte, but God has called me to coffee drinkers."

Let's face it, most of our calling is pretty clear. To live as an authentic disciple of all that Jesus commanded fills your life up pretty completely. The stuff we get hung up about like geographical location is pretty minor by comparison. On top of that God has gifted us all with lots of intellectual capacity as well as our comunity to help work things out. Plus the gifting of each person is a pretty clear pointer to the way ahead.

Which is not to say that there is no subjective edge to God's call. One wise leader described it as, "what you feel you have to do." - a sense of inner compulsion - a restlessness that won't go away and won't be satisfied by lesser things.

A think the other thing that worries my about God's call is that it divides Christians into those that have it and those that don't (or are waiting for it). There is no such division, we all have a vocation, a calling. We should all have a sense that we are doing what God has called us to, whether it is labelled as Christian job or not.

Come on people, God is out there and active already and wants you to be too. No need to wait for a call!