Selected or Equipped?
I thought I'd let you in on what my classmates get every week from me. The following is a forum post I created for Personal Leadership discussing the book "Finding a job you can love" by Mattson and Miller:
On page 155 of "Finding a job you can love," Mattson and Miller say, *God often selected those [Bible characters] who already had the natural ability and motivation to provide particular services and gave them a supernatural abundance of the same ability.* I thought this was an interesting quote because it`s the opposite of what I heard in Christian media growing up: God doesn`t call the equipped, He equips the called. Personally, it seems to me that God chooses the weak to build the strong, that He chooses the least likely in order to humble the most likely. If that's the case, though, what place to our gifts hold in our callings?
If God selects the gifted for what their gifted for, it`s almost easy to follow Him. What more must I do than offer Him what I have and watch him multiply and use it (The feeding of the 5,000 anyone?)?
If God equips the called to go into areas they have no gifting in, it becomes extremely hard to discern where God is calling you. If you don`t have to know squat about what God has purposed your life around, how will you recognize when you get there? How do you know if God's calling you to a job you hate (a legitimate call to suffering?) or whether He is calling you to a job you enjoy (a call to blessing?)? Furthermore, if God calls you to an area your gifted in, it's harder to give over the glory to Him because, in your eyes, you don't need "equipping": You're already competent in that area.
For me, I would say that God has designed us in a purposeful way that He intends on actually using, not just letting rust. The key, however, is if we let Him use it where He wants... and when He wants and how He wants. The other side of the coin has some truth too: The good message that comes with God equipping the called vs. calling the equipped is that He can use us in ways SO outside of our natural ability, that it could be only Him that got us there, which is a great testimony to those watching our lives (let our mess become our message?).
Yet, would someone watching get a greater longing for God if they saw that God uses our passions to further His kingdom, not just our bodily frames as vessels?
On page 155 of "Finding a job you can love," Mattson and Miller say, *God often selected those [Bible characters] who already had the natural ability and motivation to provide particular services and gave them a supernatural abundance of the same ability.* I thought this was an interesting quote because it`s the opposite of what I heard in Christian media growing up: God doesn`t call the equipped, He equips the called. Personally, it seems to me that God chooses the weak to build the strong, that He chooses the least likely in order to humble the most likely. If that's the case, though, what place to our gifts hold in our callings?
If God selects the gifted for what their gifted for, it`s almost easy to follow Him. What more must I do than offer Him what I have and watch him multiply and use it (The feeding of the 5,000 anyone?)?
If God equips the called to go into areas they have no gifting in, it becomes extremely hard to discern where God is calling you. If you don`t have to know squat about what God has purposed your life around, how will you recognize when you get there? How do you know if God's calling you to a job you hate (a legitimate call to suffering?) or whether He is calling you to a job you enjoy (a call to blessing?)? Furthermore, if God calls you to an area your gifted in, it's harder to give over the glory to Him because, in your eyes, you don't need "equipping": You're already competent in that area.
For me, I would say that God has designed us in a purposeful way that He intends on actually using, not just letting rust. The key, however, is if we let Him use it where He wants... and when He wants and how He wants. The other side of the coin has some truth too: The good message that comes with God equipping the called vs. calling the equipped is that He can use us in ways SO outside of our natural ability, that it could be only Him that got us there, which is a great testimony to those watching our lives (let our mess become our message?).
Yet, would someone watching get a greater longing for God if they saw that God uses our passions to further His kingdom, not just our bodily frames as vessels?
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