I’m sure we’ve all heard the phrase, “God has a calling for your life.” This is true. And I’m sure that we all have an idea of what we want that calling to look like. It usually falls in line with what we think (I want to put an emphasis on the word think there) we’d be good at, and in our heads, it usually unfolds how we think it should unfold. But God’s plan doesn’t depend on what we think, and neither does His calling. We’ll be focusing on the latter today.
Let’s open up to Jeremiah 1. As usual, we’re in the New International Version (NIV).
For context, Jeremiah was a prophet. He was alive in about 627 B.C., and in this time, Israel had fallen into major sin. Israel needed to repent. God had chosen Jeremiah to warn them about their unrepentance and, as a consequence, Jerusalem’s upcoming downfall.
Like Moses, Paul, several others in the Bible and even us, Jeremiah tried to reason with God on why he wasn’t called to be a prophet. In fact, in Jeremiah 1:6 (NIV), Jeremiah tells us that he told God that he didn’t know how to speak (Moses did this, too), and that he is too young to fulfill the calling that God had on his life. This was right after God had told him, “‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations'” (Jer. 1:5 NIV). This tells us that before Jeremiah was even born, God had this calling on his life. God also knew that Jeremiah would rebut that calling because he felt that he was inadequate for it. Here, there is a little bit of Jeremiah in all of us.
When it comes to something so profound as the calling that the Lord has for us, we can sometimes listen to our own “why,” “but” and “how” more than we listen to God telling us that He’s already figured it out. This is especially true for whenever it differs vastly from what we believe about ourselves. We’ve seen this in Exodus, with Moses (who had social anxiety and ended up speaking to thousands of Israelites) and we see it with Jeremiah, but that’s also in ourselves. For instance, in my church, I sometimes plan and teach small lessons in our preteen ministry. And (get this), in college, I was a teaching major. I taught one lesson and dropped it because I couldn’t handle it. So, you can imagine the way I first reacted when God had me, a teaching major has-been, teaching preteens. I’m sure you can think of times when you were in a similar situation, too. The point is that God’s calling doesn’t change based on our feelings about ourselves. We can think we’re meant to do one thing when God knows we’re meant to do another, and He knew it before we were even born.
We can also factor other peoples’ opinions into our calling, when the only opinion that matters is God’s. Now, I do want to specify that there’s nothing wrong with wanting to do well in your calling—the issue arises when we do well for other people instead of to exalt God. In a way (and this is hypothetical), it’s like an artist with Christian roots who notices that the public is starting to trend toward vulgar lyrics and themes in music, and instead of staying away from that because God hates it, they lean into it because the public loves it. We have to understand that God’s calling on our lives is not to make us popular.
In fact, His calling could (and in this world, often will) make us unpopular. This is what it would do for Jeremiah. He was commanded to call Israel’s sin out and tell them to repent—not something that they wanted to hear—but something they needed to hear. But, God tells him, “‘Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them'” (Jer. 1:17). In verse 19, He says, “‘They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you.'” In fulfilling God’s calling, we will make people mad, and we will experience pushback (and even persecution) for that, but we will be doing so for God’s Kingdom.
Though our callings may not be what we thought they would and they may not happen how we think they should, we have to remember and rejoice that this is not about us. This is about our risen King and Savior and sharing His light with those who are in the dark. Let’s make Him proud—and let’s make Him known.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Katie Pennington is a writer and editor who is originally from Hazard, Kentucky, but currently resides with her family in central Tennessee (though she frequently visits her Appalachian roots). Her favorite Bible verse is Psalm 42:5, which reminds her that in despair, there’s hope in God, and there’s healing in praising Him.