I used to not believe it.
Even doubted to declare it.
That the minutia of one simple life and all the infinitesimal moments of an ordinary day could actually add up to one meaningful, momentous and memorable life.
I mean — can really flipping pancakes every morning and folding PJs every night lead you towards your calling?
A life destined for greatness?
I sometimes still struggle with the divide.
The gulf I feel between wanting the more ‘important’ life, or solving the bigger humanitarian crisis, or the saving of eternal souls, with the reality of doing the day-in-day-out granular drill of keeping life just running rhythmically.
Honestly — how on earth would you have the time and the energy to make life what it’s meant to be when all the time and energy is spent making life run the way it needs to be?
Childhood ideals may not quite equate to adult reality, but then —
”who really gets to choose what they get to do in life? Or how life is to end, or how our stories are to unfold?”
I love what C.H Spurgeon wrote:
“Therefore be not discontented with your calling. Whatever God has made your position, or your work, abide in that, unless you are quite sure that He calls you to something else.
Let your first care be to glorify God to the utmost of your power where you are.
Fill your present sphere to His praise, and if He needs you in another He will show it you.
This evening lay aside vexatious ambition, and embrace peaceful content.”
The ‘laying aside of vexatious ambition, and embracing peaceful content’ — this takes another kind of seeing.
It takes a certain faith to believe that His hand is even in yourhere and now. Rightly where you are can be a place of inward transformation, radical revival.
The oft rushed and crazy dashes of imperfect homes with truly lively children can turn into acceptable worship.
Brownies baked with a smile can be an important service.
Kitchen talks with little people munching muffins can be eternity-shaping, (even when you’ve had to miss birthday cruises with your girlfriends, or jumping on the plane for the perfect getaway).
This is then our big dare:
Can we really surrender to God all the parts of our lives believing that He would use every part of every day, even the grit and grime of our deepest wickedness and other people’s gravest weakness, to shape us towards a life He’s truly called us into?
Perhaps this is what discovering that calling is all about.
It’s not what we envision ourselves doing.
It’s what life finds us giving.
And how we are rightly responding.
Because all these moments make us, how we respond in every season shape us.
There’s no kidding it — in that very space where discrepancies often occur and disappointments strike, seeing God there shifts us closer towards our true call.
Because if we were to ever desire to do great things in life, or be a great worker for God, or do significant things for humanity, then perhaps the big requirement is to grow our soul to the point where we can give, and not fear like we’d run out.
To use this time to cultivate a walk with God, and actually possess what the Word says we possess; believing it and not just knowing it.
We can learn how we are truly seen in Christ, and to walk confident, unashamed.
We can believe that our small days can lead to magnifying a great God.
To make it our ultimate aim to not find ‘the call’, but to praise Him in all we go through as the ultimate end of all we are to become.
If we can set our gaze on Him — the small, lowly places of meagre offerings — we’ll never ever be ousted by our disappointment, displaced with our misplaced expectation.
All these parts of life — the good, the bad, the mundane — are opportunities to experience His nearness, His perpetual goodness.
Perhaps then in this context — it doesn’t matter then where we are, or what we do, or feel we’ve missed out on — if we can join all the seemingly disconnecting dots into a paean of praise for Him, because‘whosoever offers praise glorifies Him’.
I’m learning it so slowly and realizing it so painstakingly:
The experiences of things are necessary before the study of them.
And so we can always be patient for the parts of our stories marked more with turbulent times, brazen blows, desert days and even yieldless years, than the wonderful, happy ones.
Because these little days when done faithfully removes our idealisation of what we think are our natural pluck contributing towards our great life, and gears us towards a life that is deeply abiding, bountifully a blessing.
“And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry” (NKJV) 1 Timothy 1:12
It’s true —
It’s never because of who we are that we make it, it’s always because of who He is.
This then is the promise for anyone with a big heart and an even bigger dream:
Find your towel, roll your sleeve, and keep your eyes on Him.
Because in doing so, we’ll slip seamlessly into a life of true service, and falling in love with true greatness, we’ll then sense the calling, and walking with Him turns any ordinary day into quite glorious ones…