God's Calling

I thought this to be a very good post from Jeff over at Rethinking Church.:

"This might come out more like a paraphrase, but there's a quote in Wild at Heart by John Eldredge that goes something like this:

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

That concept has stuck with me ever since reading that book, because it's a paradigm shift for me. So many people run from their "calling to the ministry", for example, because they're terrified that God will demand that they do something they don't want to do. And yet--perhaps we're looking at this all wrong. Maybe the seeds of desire in our hearts--the things that make us come alive--are actually a clue to what God might want us to do. I'm not talking about the fads and fleeting fancies; I'm talking about the deep-rooted passions that just don't go away. Why would we think God would put those desires there, only to deny them down the road? Maybe those deep passions are a clue to our "calling."

This is significant to me because in this period of deconstruction, a lot of what I thought I was called to do is now having to be re-defined, because it was based on an institutional structure that I no longer find either Biblical or helpful. And yet--the Bible makes it clear that God's gifts and callings are irrevocable, and won't just go away. Ergo--I must have misinterpreted the nature of my calling. I have been thinking of this much too narrowly."

Continued here.