The Unchanging Call

As this month of June unfolds and I walk deeper into my 78th birthday month, I find myself thinking again about a recent lesson learned about God's calling.  My first experience with the calling of God came just before my 18th birthday and weeks before I left home for Young Harris College.  It was one of those unexplainable moments that you knew you knew.  Though I had a long drawn out debate with God about the call to preach, I knew what I heard.  I simply did not like it, or want to accept it.  As it turned out, I loved preaching.  Of all the tasks which were mine as a result of ordination, preaching was the thing which I loved the most.   

When I retired it was strange to think of life without preaching, but before I had time to give it much thought an opportunity came to preach at a small church about ten miles from the farm.  Finally, though, after a little over four years, my circumstances changed and I had to step away from what would be my last full time preaching appointment.  A lesson learned over these last ten years of not preaching every Sunday is that God lifted the sense of urgency about preaching and led me into different ways of serving Him.  As I approach my 78th birthday, I am grateful that God is not through with me yet and that the call of long ago remains, but that it has moved me in new directions.  

As I write JourneyNotes on a nearly daily basis, I know the ability to do so is a gift from Him.  He has been as faithful to enable this writing ministry even as He did a preaching ministry of over forty years.  Another ministry which has unfolded before me in the place of preaching is praying.  While I have always prayed, more and more it seems that God brings into my life people for whom I sense the need to intercede in prayer.  What I have learned is that while what God asks or calls us to do may change, the fact that He is always calling us to be useful for His Kingdom's work is unchanging.