Answering God's Callနမူနာ

Assurance in Your Calling

Listen to the audio file to hear the complete devotional with accompanying worship music, and find a written version below: 

Think about a favorite movie or book you’ve watched or read several times. Isn’t it interesting that even when you know the ending, you can still get caught up in the twists and turns of the plot? When the main characters break up; when the other side starts to win...we find ourselves frustrated or anxious! Even when we know the ending, it’s hard not to get distracted by the immediate circumstances at hand. 

We experience something similar in our callings. We are able to possess assurance in our callings, but we often don’t. To recap what our calling is...as Christians, we are called to make disciples and to reflect Christ’s love to the world. Each of us manifests this calling uniquely given the specific roles and circumstances we have been placed into. As we obey God in living out our calling, he uses our faithfulness to carry out his plan of saving people and making himself known. But it can be easy to get distracted by the setbacks at hand. It can be easy to lose sight of the ending: that God’s plan will be fulfilled. 

In the Exodus story, we see several setbacks that seem to jeopardize Moses’s calling and God’s plan. Moses has been called to lead the Israelites out of slavery and into the promised land. But when Moses tells Pharaoh to let his people go, Pharaoh responds by instead making the Israelite slaves work even harder. 

Moses then faces a rejection of his leadership. The Israelites get upset at Moses for confronting Pharaoh and acting as the catalyst for their increased workload. They say to Moses, “May the Lord look upon you and judge you.” 

Lastly, Moses faces the setback of Pharaoh's hard heart. Pharaoh is resolutely against the idea of letting the Israelites go.

From the outside, it looks as if God’s plan is failing. But in reality, God is going to use these obstacles as an opportunity to put himself and his glory on display. No setback can get in the way of God’s plan. As Moses faithfully carries out his calling, he can do so with the assurance that in the end, God’s plan will come to fruition. 

This reality continues to exist today! God’s plan to bring his people into spiritual freedom and to make himself known to them will be brought to completion. When we lack this assurance, we can look at the one whose assurance in God’s plan never wavered: Jesus. The religious authorities of his day questioned his ministry and sought to end it. His family members misunderstood him. His disciples missed the point of his mission. His own people wanted to crucify him. But in the face of all these circumstances that looked like setbacks, God’s plan was still victorious in the end. As Jesus hung dying on the cross, He knew that what looked like the final setback was actually the fulfillment of God’s plan. “It is finished,” were Jesus’s last words before he gave up his life. 

God’s victory on the cross shows us that we can be confident in the final victory at Christ’s second coming: when all God’s people will experience eternity with him. Our only job is to continue moving forward faithfully in our callings. While we may not even see the resolution in our lifetime, God will use our faithfulness in his sovereign plan of salvation and redemption. In the presence of setbacks, remember the assurance of this victory. Remember the ending.