Calling.  It is a bit of a buzz word in Christian culture today.  And for everyone of us who gets passionate about the subject of our “calling” I believe there are at least as many of us who get annoyed, or discouraged, or feel shame.

I know because that used to be me.

Not very long ago I was standing on the annoyed-discouraged-shamed hill looking over at the perceived “called” ones, all joyful and fulfilled on their hill, and I couldn’t figure out how to cross the space in between.  And honestly, I didn’t know if I wanted to.  Something felt flashy and superficial about those pretty “callings” and something felt a little more holy and gritty down here in the martyred trenches of “real life.”  “Oh brother,” I would think.  “Who has the time or energy for a calling?  My calling is to keep these kids alive.  My calling is to not kill my husband.  Maybe I can muster the ambition to read the Bible after I catch up on sleep/housework/laundry/ (fill in all the blanks to infinity). Is that a calling?  Whatever.”  And I was prideful.  And I was jealous.  And I was anemic and desperate for an adventure with Jesus that would rescue me from my hill.

And then I realized that I didn’t have to cross the chasm between the hills.  I did not have to tumble down one side and scale the other.  There was no magical bridge spanning the distance.

There was a door.  And it was open.

You see, when I did get that Bible out, I couldn’t get away from the idea of calling, of fruitfulness, of this whole thing having to turn outward at some point to really be the point.

“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”  John 15:8

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit- fruit that will last -and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.”  John 15:16

“For we are God’s handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”  Ephesians 2:10

“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have command you.”  Matthew 28:19-20

“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore to send out workers into his harvest field. Go!”  Luke 10:2-3

So, the open door… I began praying earnestly, humbly about my “calling,” my “what else,” my “fruitfulness,” my “good works.”  I had to lay down the mantle of harried stay-at-home mom just trying to get a shower.  I had to put down the shovel that was digging me further into the trenches of martyrdom, and genuinely ask.  And He answered.  He does that you know.  When we shut up for a moment with all of our complaining and justifying and whining (or is that just me?), He likes to speak to His children.  He likes to let us in on His plans for our lives, even if it’s just a little sliver at a time.  He has a lot to say to a humble, quiet, seeking, patient, surrendered heart.  He told me some things He wanted to do in my life.  He spoke clearly into my calling and He told me the things I would do (and with that so many things I would not do. For every yes there is a no).

The first open door I had to walk through was to choose believe it.

My first open door off of the fruitless hill of shame and discouragement was simply belief.  And I didn’t just secretly believe it in my heart.  Y’all, I wrote it down on the last page of my journal.  I boldly proclaimed in black and white, “I will be: _______,  _______,  and _______.”   Next He invited me through the open door of telling another human being what I thought my calling was.  Guts much?  I mean that feels risky, and presumptuous.  It feels like you are officially turning in your uniform, your allegiance for one team and bravely putting on a new one.  And what if it doesn’t happen?  And what if I look stupid?  And what if they judge me (you know, like I had been judging so many others before)?  It was a risky door down the corridor of calling but I timidly stepped through.

And before I knew it, there was another door opening to me, and another.  Not flashy doors.  Not doors that led to huge stages or followings or fame.  But new doors that led to fresh air and another “yes” from the Lord.  And it struck me that it just may be this simple.  Our calling just may be to walk through the open door in front of us.  I don’t think we need to manufacture the door, or crow-bar it open, just step through.  Maybe it gets super complicated when we spend more time looking at someone else’s calling rather than at the door standing in front of us.

Lately I have been reading through the Old Testament, following Abraham’s decedents, the Israelites, from promise, to slavery, to rescue, to wandering, to Promised Land.  God tells his people over and over that He will give them this land, that He will go before them and fight their battles, that they are to be strong and courageous and take their Promised Land.  But then I came across a few interesting verses in Deuteronomy 2.  Moses is recounting the 40 years in the wilderness and he says that God finally told him they were ready to head to Canaan, their Promised Land.  Along the way God says, “Give the people these orders: ‘You are about to pass through the territory of your relatives the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir.  They will be afraid of you, but be very careful.  Do not provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land, not even enough to put your foot on.” (Deut. 2:4-5). He says a similar thing about the Moabites in verse 9 declaring, “I will not give you any parts of their land,”  and about the Ammonites in verse 19 saying, “I will not give you possession of any land belonging to the Ammonites.”  

I find these verses so interesting in the middle of all the “TAKE THE PROMISED LAND! DO NOT BE AFRAID! GO FOR IT!” pep rallies.  God is saying, “This is the door I have opened for you.  This is what I have called you to.  This is your Promise.  Right here.  Come this way.  But be careful… That is their land, that is their’s to possess, not yours.  That is what I have called them to.. You can’t have that.”

Do you remember the scene from “Monster’s Inc.” with all the doors?  There were certain doors for certain monsters to walk through, leading them to their own jobs.  I think heaven may have a room like that.  Each of us have doors with our names on them, with our calling behind them, with fruitfulness waiting on the other side.  And just like in the movie, chaos may  ensue when we are swinging around in the maze of everyone else’s doors… all the while ours is ready and open for us.  It may be a small door and you may not even recognize its threshold as you sit at that lunch, answer that call to serve, intercede for that injustice, do that thing that just comes naturally.  But until you walk through the first one, you won’t see the next.

So if you are still on the seemingly “un-called” hill, know that really you are not.  If you can’t find an open door right now, then use this waiting time to train.  Read books about what you want to do/gets you fired up/feel passionate about/are good at. Pray.  Follow along as someone walks that path ahead of you.  That way, when the door does open, you aren’t starting at a 0.  You will be strong and ready.  God does His best training in the waiting.

And if you have timidly wrote a big dream in the back of your journal then under it write Matthew 7:7-8: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.. For everyone who asks receives, the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”  Believe it.  And  I challenge you to tell someone.  Scary?  Yep.  But Hebrews 10:38 says, “But my righteous one will live by faith.  And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.”  He takes no pleasure in our bitterness, in our envy, in our judgement, in our discouragement… It is to His glory that we bear much fruit.  So take a step through your door, timidly, boldly, just step.  And cheer someone else on as they walk through theirs.  Like so many things in the Christian faith , it is not easy, it take guts, but I think it is much simpler than we’ve made it.   And remember:

“The one who calls you is faithful, and HE WILL DO IT.”  I Thessalonians 2:14

I think I have spent much of my life feeling like too much and not enough all at the same.  Only a woman could find herself there!  My grandmother, my precious Nannie, was famous for saying, “Everything in moderation.”  Maybe there were a generation of grandmothers who were famous for saying that very thing.  It imprinted on my heart at an early age and I have spent the last 4 decades trying to find the elusive moderation she held in such high regard… That perfect balance of high and low, work and rest, too much and not enough.

So, let me go ahead and let you in on my “too much and not enough-ness.”  I tend to be too disciplined, which makes me not spontaneous enough.  I have a tendency be too structured which makes me not flexible enough.  I have been known to be too black and white on most subjects which makes me not compassionate enough.  I am inclined to be too driven which makes me not fun enough.  I am too task-oriented which makes me not sleep enough.  There are times and subjects about which I am too emotional which leaves me not objective enough.  I know my too much and not enough-ness.  No one has to point them out to me. I feel them down in my marrow.  They play like an annoying song on repeat in my head.

I have gone through seasons of feeling a lot of shame over my “too much and not enough-ness.”  I have listened to the lies that told me I had to hide it, overcome it, pretend it away.  And if none of that worked, well I should just isolate myself, not let myself be known, shut my mouth because “everything in moderation” you know.

And then God blessed me with a circle of fierce friends to walk this road of womanhood, faith, motherhood, and marriage with.  And do you know what I realized when I got in there deep with them?  They are all too much and not enough too!  Just in different ways… I have friends who are really into eating well and health, very involved in social justice, extremely focused on education for their children, exceptionally tuned in to intimacy with their husbands, particularly concerned with finances.  And I know that their “too much-ness” leaves gaps of  “not enough-ness” in their lives too.

In my hiding and pretending years I might have judged their too much and not enough.  I may have defended my too much by focusing on their not enough all the while wishing desperately I had a sliver of it.  And then a beautiful thing happened… On my 40th birthday, my darling friends went around and told me the thing that they loved and respected the most about me.  And every single one mentioned some part of my “too much.”  They respect how disciplined I am in my time in the Word, how hard I work to make my home a place where others feel welcomed, how driven I am to find and fulfill God’s calling on my life.  My too much inspired and encouraged their not enough-ness just as their’s does mine.

It’s not rocket science.  It is the body of Christ. 

I Corinthians.12: 12 says, “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.”  Verses 15-20 go on to read, “Now if the foot should say, ”Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?  If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?  But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them just as he wanted them to be.  If they were all one part, where would the body be?  As it is, there are many parts, but one body.”

Here is a bit of a paraphrase: “Now if the behind-the-scenes servant should say to the hostess, because I am not a hostess I am not enough.”  And if the hostess should say to the behind-the-scenes servant, “because I am not a behind-the-scenes servant I’m too much in the wrong ways and I have no place, it would not be true for either.  If the disciplined student of the Word who was raised in church and has been walking with Jesus since she could walk should say to the radically saved, passionate convert, because my witness is not dramatic, I am not relative enough,  And if the powerfully converted sinner and novice Bible student should say to the long-time saint because I do not know enough I will keep quiet, it would not render either ineffective.”

The foot needs the hand.  The eye needs the ear.  My structured, disciplined, driven self needs my friend’s spontaneity and light heartedness, and (sometimes a romance guru.). And I trust they need my too much too.

Obviously we know that there are some places of too much that are simply sin… too much wine is alcoholism, too much work is workaholism, too many rules is legalism, too much rest is laziness.

But we also know that our God is a God of abundance, not moderation.

He is abundant in grace, and love, and in giving good gifts to His children.  And maybe, it is there in our too much that we find our gifts and His unique calling on our life.  Maybe when we press in and refine our too much, rather than try to hide it, we find that it is, in fact, just right.  When we let Him be enough in our not enough-ness we are then exactly enough.

Oh how I pray you have a circle who love you enough to tell you that they need your too much for their not enough.  How I pray that you find the courage to come out of hiding to tell a friend on this journey that her too much inspires and encourages you in your not enough-ness.  And when it is our turn, let’s tell our daughters and granddaughters of God’s abundance.  To be “too much” is in His character and He is all for their, for our, for your abundance.  Only in Him are any of us enough.

 

There are a lot of fractions going on around here lately.  I have a 5th and 6th grader who I am attempting to teach the math to and it seems to be all fractions all the time.  Adding fractions, subtracting fractions, multiplying and dividing fractions… I’m not great at the math.  I prefer words to numbers (shocking I know). I have had to go back and read every explanation for every computation in each and every lesson.  It is not like riding a bicycle for me- it has not come back naturally.  Maybe that’s because I could never ride this one in the first place.  Sorry, Kids, you may be doomed.

But one thing I do remember is that you have to reduce the fraction in the end.  You have to find the lowest common denominator and simplify your answer, make it smaller, bring it down.  In fact, the definition of “reduce” is this: “to bring down to a smaller extent, size, amount, number, to lower in degree, intensity, to bring down to a lower range, dignity, etc.”   The lowest common denominator is the smallest number both denominators (that’s the number on the bottom, I’m pretty sure) have in common that is used to reduce the overall fraction.

I may not make many friends with this one but I am standing on 2 Timothy 1:7 when Paul says, “For the Spirit God gave [me] does not make [me] timid, but gives [me] power, love, and self-discipline.”  So here we go… I see a culture of Christians who are living a lowest common denominator faith, who are constantly looking for, or at least are okay with reducing their walk, their witness, and their calling in “extent, size, degree, and intensity.”  And, laying all my cards on the table, the culture I am most immersed in is “Mom Culture.”  Those are the articles and posts that fill my newsfeed.  Those are the books that Amazon recommends.  Those are the circles I walk in in my real life and virtually as well.  And we have been reduced, Girls.

And I think the part that is firing me up the most is that we are wrapping our reduced faith, our lazy Christianity, our teeny tiny callings up with a bow and calling it grace.  Can I just say a word about grace?  Yes, grace is the “free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners.”  And, absolutely we are saved by that grace alone and not by any works of our own so that “no man may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).”   But please understand, grace was free for you, not for God, and not for Jesus.  The very grace that we tend to flippantly sprinkle over apathy to sin and idleness in Kingdom work cost God his Son, and cost Jesus His life.  In his book The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer says of grace, “Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘Ye were bought at a price’, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.”

There is a great movement in the Mom Culture to flee perfectionism as fast at you can!  That somehow it is the rot that is destroying us as a generation of women and mothers.  The books out there right now on this very subject are too many to count, and I get it.  It is good and right to turn our backs on a kind of false mask of perfection when we are addressing an outward image or in opposition to authenticity.  I understand and respect the heart of the movement.  But are we taking it a bit far?  Are we wrapping laziness and sin up in a cheap grace, and patting ourselves on the back in the middle of our ineffective, fruitless walks?  The Bible never says to flee perfection.  The Bible says to flee sin (1 Cor. 10:14, 2 Tim 2:22, and so many more).  We also find curious commands in the Word such as: “Be PERFECT, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” (Matt. 5:48) and “But just as He who called you is holy, so be HOLY in all you do; for it is written, ‘Be HOLY because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:15-16).  Obviously we know that we can never be perfect or holy apart from the blood of Jesus Christ, but I just wonder about the amount of time we spend striving for it, versus the amount of time we spend reveling in all of our mess.

Are we celebrating our brokenness above our transformation?  After all, “If anyone is in Christ the new creation has come.  The old has gone, the new is here (2 Corinthians 5:17)!”  Are we lifting high our inabilities to showcase His complete ability, or to just make excuses?

Mom friends, is the entirety of your walk with Jesus wrapped up in whether or not you make it to 10am without yelling at your kids?  Is the biggest thing you are believing God for a day without tears, a baby who sleeps through the night, a passing grade on that test, a shower?  I get it. I’ve been there.  I could still be there, believe me.  But it is a dangerous slope.  It’s like Mommy Mush Brain quicksand.  We are lulled into a futility of the mind that renders us completely ineffective for the Kingdom.

Romans 1:21 says, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God, nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”   Ephesians 4:17 reads, “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.  They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts..”  I’m real freaked out by this futility of the mind that leads to darkened hearts and understanding.  It’s so scary to me because IT IS EVERYWHERE!!!  If we are not intentional about guarding against it, I dare say we could look up after a week, a month, maybe even a year and have invested in nothing but futile (ineffective, useless, trifling, frivolous, unimportant) thinking.  Romans 12:2 combats futility of the mind with this: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  

It’s Satan’s work, you know. If he can’t keep you from future glory, he will at least keep you from present fruitfulness.  He will wrap himself up as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14), and sell you a bill of Mommy goods that say that all of heaven is just perched waiting to see if you survive until nap time.  No.  Our God is a God of abundance and purpose and fullness.  He has more for you.  Ask Him.  Listen, we are not all called to big flashy ministries.  We are not all called to write books, to preach to stadiums, to cut top-selling worship albums, but we are all called, (like Jesus Himself was called) to be about our Father’s business during our short time here on earth (Luke 2:49).  I love my kids.  I pour myself out for them daily.  I have never prayed for anyone like I pray for my husband and children ALL OF THE TIME.  I even try to be nice to them most days.  But if my calling, if my adventure with Jesus terminated on how well dinner went tonight or whether or not they got along that day, I would be completely burnt out and bored with God. A.W. Tozer said, “Culture is putting out the light in men and women’s souls.”   If that’s you, you may want to see how far in the quicksand you have fallen.  Then, I challenge you to put down FaceBook or the latest Mommy Blog that preaches cheap grace and pick up some Foster, Bonhoeffer, or C.S. Lewis. (Yes you do have time if you put aside the rest).  If The Screwtape Letters don’t make you fighting mad then I don’t know what will.

Hebrews 12:1 says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.  And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us…”   I sometimes just picture this great cloud of witnesses up in heaven, you know, Moses, Joshua, Esther, Steven, Peter, Paul, Mother Theresa, Elisabeth Elliot, and think “what must they think?”  What these martyrs and heroes of the the faith must think of our lowest common denominator effectiveness.  Of this reduction of our faith and calling.  Girls, what will our generation be known for?  Self-absorbtion masked as motherhood?  Futility of mind masked as “Mommy Brain?”  Laziness and idleness in Kingdom work masked as grace?  We can do better.  I believe in us!  Let’s run our race for our moment and make an impact on the world, maybe even the the world outside our four walls.

So, if you are still reading this and still speaking to me here is my prayer for you, for me, for our lowest common denominator Christian culture

“With this in mind, we (I) constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of His calling and that by His power He may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith.  We (I) pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  2 Thessalonians 1:11-12

I’ll leave you with this quote from Mike Yaconelli’s book Dangerous Wonder and I pray it inspires you to throw this thing wide open, to fight futility and apathy, and to be constantly about an increase of Jesus rather than a reduction of our effectiveness:  “I’m ready for a Christianity that ‘ruins’ my life, that captures my heart and makes me uncomfortable. I want to be filled with an astonishment which is so captivating that I am considered wild and unpredictable and…well…dangerous.  Yes, I want to be “dangerous” to a dull and boring religion.  I want a faith that is considered “dangerous” by our predictable and monotonous culture…. I want a lifetime of holy moments.  Every day I want to be in dangerous proximity to Jesus.  I long for a life that explodes with meaning and is filled with adventure, wonder, risk, and danger; a faith that is gloriously treacherous.”

How about you?

“For this reason I remind you to fan into the flame the gift of God…”

2 Timothy 1:6