A Compelling Word

To hear the call of God is to live life under a compelling and unshakeable Word.  Even if the call is rejected and its demands are pushed away, the weight of the call of God still is suspended over any living that we do.  The story of Jonah in the Old Testament is a call story.  Jonah heard the call.  About this there is no doubt, but he chose to do everything he could to get away from it.  Called to go to Nineveh in the east, he bought passage on a ship sailing west.  But, even in his outright turning away from what he knew to be true, he still found himself living under such a compelling word that he finally realized obedience was his only option.  So by way of the belly of the big fish, he went to Nineveh and to God's bidding.   

There were others who would have chosen to turn away from the call of God.  Moses, the great man of faith in the Hebrew narrative, was also a man who wanted nothing to do with what he knew to be the call of God in his life.  Ananias, the one who finally went to the newly converted Saul of Tarsus, had his moment of asking God if He knew what He was doing in calling him to go.  But, in both cases, they went and did at great risk to themselve what God was calling them to do.   

To truly hear the call of God is to live with the realization that there is no alternative except heeding the call.  Many a person who has chosen not to heed the call of God also bears witness to an awareness that somewhere in the past God's calls lies unheeded, but not forgotten.  The call of God is not a trifling thing.  As Dietrich Bonhoeffeer wrote from prison,  "When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die."  (The Cost of Discipleship)