Living His WordSample

On the basis of our verses for today we can see that God knows His people before they are born and chooses each one of them for a special work, a special calling unique to them. God is a God who plans things out in advance and we figure into those plans.

It would be a mistake to believe that our verses for today apply only to Jeremiah and that only he was known by God before he was born and only he had a special work to do. As if God did not know the rest of us before we were born and did not have any plans for us. Our special calling, obviously, is not the same as Jeremiah’s and it may not be anything anywhere near as important as Jeremiah’s, but it is a calling nonetheless.

Since it is God who calls us for special works, we can expect to have within us the spiritual gifts and resources necessary to fulfill the calling. God is at work in all of us to do everything He has called us to do (I Corinthians 12:5-7). Indeed, one way that we can identify our calling is to become aware of the spiritual resources we have available to us.

Further, since it is God who calls us, we can expect to have a burden for whatever it is He wants us to do. For the Apostle Paul, for example, it was preaching the gospel to those who are not Jews (Romans 15:15-16). Another way we can identify our calling is to become aware of the burden God has placed on our hearts.

Finally, since it is God who calls us, we can expect that He will have worked out our preparation for the special work. Parental influence, educational preparation, job and life experience, and any number of other factors may all play their role in preparing us for the work. Becoming aware of the relevance of these factors is yet another way of identifying our calling.

God knew each one of us and chose each one of us for a special work before we were born.