For some reason tonight my mind was flooded with questions about God's calling on people's lives. I asked a couple people and then did a lot of praying, researching, reading and thinking. I blogged as I did it so here it is...feel free to comment and add your own imput. There are still questions I have that are unanswered but I think I found the answers to the main questions that will allow me to sleep tonight. I could be very wrong on all of this so if you feel differently please comment and share your thoughts, I am still looking for the answers.
Do you ever wonder if God has called every single person to live some crazy awesome and influential life or if he only chooses certain people? Because if he does have that plan for everyone then there wouldn't be any ordinary people. And if there were no ordinary people how would you know what is extraordinary because that's how everyone lives? So does God have favorites and calls some to extraordinary lives and some to just ordinary? Or does he call everyone but only some except?
What is the difference between being called and being chosen? If only some are chosen does that mean God loves the chosen more? Does God have favorites?
Matthew 22:14 says "For many are called but few are chosen." As soon as I thought I had grasped that sentence I read it in context and now I am lost. I will come back to that later...
Who is Paul talking to/about in Romans 8:29 when it says
"For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brother and sisters. And having chosen them he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave the his glory."
Who exactly are God's people? Is it just the Israelites? Is it anyone who accepts his Son? Is he just talking to the Romans and not really to us now?
How do you tell when reading the Bible if when the writer is saying things like, I have chosen you, I have set you apart, go and do this or that; how do you know if he is talking to you particularly or if he was only talking to the people the book was originally written for?
"God has such an amazing calling on your life and he's going to use you to do things more incredible than you can imagine!"
Ever heard that before? Is that just the latest Christianese saying or do the people that say this actually know for a fact that this is true? Or maybe they are just trying to speak it into existence. I don't know about you but I can imagine some pretty crazy and incredible things. If God's call on my life involves things greater than I can imagine, along with all the other people in the world that have been told that...thats gonna be a lot of incredible callings. If everyone in the world is called to do incredible things then who are they going to impact if everyone is impacting?
If it is true and God has bigger things planned for me than I could ever imagine, why me? I'm sure there are plenty of other people in the world that want to be called to something great, want to live an extraordinary life. Why would I get chosen for that? Why can't more people experience and do the things I have gotten to experience and do and will do and will experience?
God has to call some people to greater things than others. But how is that determined? And does that mean he loves those people more? Why do those people get to have the cool callings?
Romans 9:20-21
"Who are you, a mere human being, to argue with God? Should the thing that was created say to the one who created , "Why have you made me like this?" When a potter makes jars out of clay, doesn't he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for decoration and another to throw garbage into?" - ouch
So is it wrong to ask God why he created you the way he did? To ask why he called you to one thing and didn't call someone else?
1 Corinthians 12:12-31 talks about the body of Christ and how it has many parts but is one body. And I think what it's saying is that just because you may be a foot and not an eye (or a soccer mom and not a missionary) doesn't mean you are not important. Because if the body didn't have feet then it wouldn't get anywhere (or if there were no soccer moms then the kids that are supposed to grow up to be missionaries would never be raised the way they need to be) In verse 17 it says that if the whole body were an eye then how would it hear? (If every Christian decided to be a missionary then how would they have support for their ministry?)
So we are all called to something. God has us all called to be a part of the body. But we can't all be the mouth or the eyes or the parts we might think are important. The real question is, can you learn to be happy with and live out to the fullest being a knee cap and not the head?
I could be wrong but I would think that if God called you to be a part of his body he would put the desire for that part in you. Maybe not at first but if you trusted him and worked at that part you would realize it's what you've wanted all along.
Romans 12:6
"In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well."
I understand a little more what Paul meant when he wrote, "How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways! For who can know the Lord's thoughts? Who knows enough to give him advice" - Romans 11:33-34
That was thought vomit spilled out in a ridiculously long blog. I feel better getting it out though so whether you actually read all that or not at least I feel a little better lol
Now I need to sleep. Tomorrow is a new day. Another chance to try and understand this wonderfully, genuisly *yet sometimes frustratingly confusing* book that is God's Word.
zzzzzzz....
