Following Your Calling

By Rick Renner

I remember when I was a boy, I dreamed about what was going to happen with my life. I dreamed about being an architect, an orchestra conductor, an art gallery owner, and even an archeologist. I had so many different dreams, because even as a young boy, I knew there was something wonderful planned for my life.

Maybe you can think back to when you were young and remember a few of the things you used to dream about. All of us have different kinds of dreams when we are young, because even as children, we all know we’re born for something. We realize that none of us are here by accident.

That is a wonderful realization, but, friend, it is only the beginning. Real purpose in life starts when we find out what God really wants us to do. Throughout our lives, we might try one thing and then another, and all of it is good and educational, but when God speaks to us, it provides clear purpose and direction, and that comes with so much power.

For example, when I really knew that God was calling me into the ministry, I was just eleven years old, and I am so grateful that I was listening at that time, because it allowed me to start preparing for the rest of my life. As I grew up and started listening to other Bible teachers like Derek Prince, I was able to watch their examples and listen for what God was calling me to do. 

By the time I was seventeen years old, I knew that God had called me to write and teach, so I jumped into my years at the university seeking out the skills that would help me do those things. I enrolled in a journalism course and worked at the school newspaper, where I learned everything I could about writing, typesetting, printing, and publishing. I also enrolled in the Greek course because I knew that if I was going to teach the New Testament, I was going to need to be able to read it in the original language. It was difficult at first, because Greek is so different from English, but I had made a commitment to it. I knew what God called me to do, and to do it, I needed to learn these things.

Friend, the call of God gives you direction and guidance. Once I had heard from God, I was able to grab hold of that purpose and align my life with it, even when the path was challenging. When you get into agreement with God about His plan, it gives you power, joy, and victory. It moves you into a place of success in your life!

Hebrews 11 talks all about the power of having faith in the words of God, and I think it is a wonderful reminder to all of us as we consider each of our purposes from Him. It starts by saying, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). When we translate that word “substance” literally, a closer translation would be something like, “Now faith is standing by things hoped for.”

In this verse, this word creates a picture of somebody who has received a promise from God, like perhaps a revelation of purpose. This person hasn’t seen the fulfillment of that promise yet, but he or she still makes a decision: “I’m going to stand by this promise. I’m going to hold onto it and align my life with it. This is what God said, so I’m never going to loosen my grip on it!” If you want to receive power and direction, then this is the kind of commitment you need to be making to whatever it is that God has spoken to you.

When you do, you unlock the power to change entire generations! That’s what Hebrews 11:3 says: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God…” (Hebrews 11:3).

The word “worlds” describes past generations or past ages, and “framed” means to take something that already exists and adapt it, amend it, or alter it. So you could translate the verse, “Through this faith that never lets go, we understand that past generations, those before us, were totally changed by the words God has spoken.”

Friend, He speaks those world-changing words to people like us. That is what the whole rest of the chapter is about. When you understand that, this becomes a life-transforming verse! Don’t tell yourself that you’re not important. You have the power to change your family, your city, your workplace — everything and everyone that touches your life! You have great power.

If you still don’t feel very powerful or equipped to accept the task God has for you, then you’re going to be so encouraged by the rest of Hebrews 11, because it has a whole list of people who moved in faith, clinging to God’s words to them, and all the amazing things that came out of their obedience — and I’m telling you, friend, these were just normal people. In fact, if we’re really honest, a lot of them are really very problematic people.

Enoch is probably the least problematic, but we really don’t know anything about him, and as you go down the list after him and look closely at these people and what they did in their lives, it becomes shocking that God used any of them. 

Let me give you just a few examples from this list that you are probably familiar with. 

Verse 8 mentions Abraham, but we know that he had a really hard time understanding the will of God. He was so spiritually unstable that he disobeyed God multiple times, and he even committed adultery with his maid because he was trying to fulfill God’s promise for Him. If he was alive today, I know I probably wouldn’t consider him qualified to be a home group leader in my church because of all the mistakes he made.

Verse 21 talks about Jacob. Friend, his name literally means “deceiver,” and that’s what he was to his brother Esau, yet the Lord made the nation of Israel out of him.

What about Moses? Friend, he was powerfully used by God, but he was very proud and arrogant. Most of us would never have wanted to work under Moses because he was so unkind, but he was the one who God chose to rescue and lead the people of Israel.

If you look at verse 32, you’ll even see David, who committed adultery and murdered one of his loyal men, and Samuel, a great prophet who fell short as a parent and refused to discipline his sons.

These are just a few verses, but if I were to go through the whole chapter, I could logically tell you why God should not have used even one of these people. You see, we have a fantasy that people in the Bible were better than us, but I’m going to tell you the truth: every one of the people on this list was flawed, yet here they are in Hebrews 11, listed as heroes of faith.

I think this sets such an example for us, because we can see that everybody on this list has a few things in common. In fact, I’d say that this list shows us that there are only three qualifications for being powerfully used by the Lord:

1: Be a normal, defective person.

2: Receive a word from God.

3: Do what God says.

We all qualify for the first point. We all are defective, so we can immediately remove the pressure of perfection from all of our shoulders, and all that is required to qualify for the second is that we listen. Friend, God wants to speak to all of us. He might have a word for your marriage, your friends, your kids, your money, your job, your talent, or anything else that touches your life, because He really does desire to talk to you about all those things.

Just look at how many times Jesus says, both in His earthly ministry and in the Book of Revelation, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15). The repetition of that command tells me that God is speaking all the time, and He’s just looking for someone who has an ear to hear.

So do you want to receive a word from God? Then you need to ask yourself if you have an ear to hear. If you’ll open your ear, I am certain that He will tell you what you need to know and give you direction. 

That brings us to the third qualification, and this one is important, because it’s the one that will set us apart from others: being obedient to what we hear.

All the people listed in Hebrews 11 could have ignored or rejected what they heard, but instead, each of them decided to cling to that word from God. In spite of themselves and their weaknesses, they said, “God has spoken to me. If I don’t do anything else right in my life, I’m going to do this one thing, because He told me to.”

You see, that’s what God is looking for. He is not looking for theologians or prophets. He’s not looking for people who even know the Bible. He’s just looking for people who will do what He says. He’s looking for someone who will say, “Yes,” and will get into agreement with the word He’s spoken to them.

Friend, I urge you to be the kind of person who says, “I’m not going to loosen my grip until I do what God told me to do.” Be like one of these heroes of faith, who left the world differently than how they found it. Even if you’ve lost the confident dreaming that you had as a child, I promise you, God does have a plan for you, and when you hear it and work to get yourself in alignment with it, you create a channel that allows His power to enter into the world. That is the power of following your calling.