You’ve heard of a “Calling from God”? I think most people related this to becoming into the priesthood, the convent or becoming an ordained minister.
This is one of the smokescreens that the world and organized religion has affected Christianity with.
The calling from God is a reality that affects every true believer in Christ. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ and proclaim Him as Lord and Savior of your life that comes about as an act of God as part of being “born-again”.
5 Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” – John 3:5-8.
This is to say, that you have as much responsibility of executing your own physical birth when your mother gave birth to you as you do when you receive your salvation through Christ and the Holy Spirit. The entire hierarchical structure created by organized religion has an adverse affect that influences many in a way that sets people further away from the reality that it is a personal relationship and a spiritual repentance that foreshadows the act of God when one becomes a follower of Christ.
Where this gets interesting, is in my observation, is how does each person actually get to the point where they receive salvation from God through faith?
It’s clear that people who lived before Christ will be in heaven, this speaks to the eternal nature of Christ and how the earliest people saved by God were saved by faith in God; for example, Abraham. I cannot give you an answer to how God has saved people who came to faith by respecting their conscience in relation to God and the workings of good vs evil, but I believe we all have a conscience hinged to an objective truth.
Individual stories are also what makes us unique, though they seem invariably linked to humility before an all powerful, loving and just God who is sovereign and yet has given each of us free will. That’s bugs alot of people, how can God be sovereign and yet give people free will? For now, I only desire to write that both are true, but unlike God, we do not have 100% autonomy as fallen human beings, but we are “free” to turn towards or away from God.
So what is my testimony? If you’ve followed along with my articles for the last year, you probably have some understanding, but it behooves myself to have one (in our efforts to make sense of it all) and you as a believer in Christ should also have your testimony in your mind, in case you are given the opportunity to share the gospel and testify to others of the Lord’s work, giving Him the glory for the changes in your life.
My walk as a someone who identified with Christ up to the point when I finally surrendered my life to Him can be summed up by the Family Circus cartoon when one of the children asks the mom, “What are traditions?” and the mom replies, “It’s something you do so often you can’t remember why you’re doing it.”
Growing up weighing the world’s solutions to a fulfilled life didn’t help, I had plenty of reasons not to seek the truth. The world’s lusts are powerful and target our base nature, to give into it. Each generation has its iconic portrayal of the sinful nature, I grew up in what many call the Dazed and Confused generation. Mixed in with what I thought was a good and practical life, I was so given over to the idol worship of worldly desires, lusts, fast cars, partying and insecurity.
This was reinforced by my life as a person going to church where I experienced the repetitive nature of the worship service, and the Bible only represented in part and interpreted through the filter of a worldly and not a biblically based perspective (I have more to reason through about the self-righteousness of the church later).
I finally took to heart to go to the source documents and decidedly so, because I was spiritually lost and abandoned by what worldly measurements I had believed in. It wouldn’t be until I was 59 years old that I finally received the awareness what it meant to live and grow through repentance and give my life to God through Jesus Christ. The gospel finally took it’s rightful place in my life.
What has your walk been like? Have you been called?
For a detailed explanation of who Jesus Christ is from the Bible’s perspective go to the video in this website , “Who is Jesus Christ?”
For a review of the Ten Commandments: https://www.challenyee.com/the-ten-commandments/
CKY
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