It is 12 hours away from Bible study, and I still cannot organize my thoughts together.
If you have read my other blog, the topic for this week is "work".
Remember in the last CCF gathering, Joshua was talking about "calling".
One concept that is stuck in my mind is that most of the time calling is not a mystique experience. Rather, on a personal level, one could decern his calling by knowing himself, his life path, his desires, his gifts, and his passions. On a wider level, by being sensitive about what is happening around him and through interaction with other people. These are of course based on being a disciple of Jesus, which is a calling shared by all Christians. Therefore, calling is not about a career choice, it is about responding to God's call. After all, you always respond to a call (you could either answer it or not), you dont choose a call. What does choosing a call means anyway?
Responding to a calling is to serve Christ; it is not restricted to "church work". Instead, any ethical work could be work done for Christ, as shown in Mat 25:35-40
The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me (v. 40)
It seems like we have dealt we calling now, but if we are satisfied with just Mat 25, then we are still high up in the sky. We want to be down-to-earth so that our lives are actually transformed. What is the difference between working with a calling and working without one? Dare I say this: Don't we do the same work anyway?
To answer the above question, we need to understand God's original intend for work. In Gen 1:26-30, God created man and assigned him work which is to manage the whole creation. It is til in Gen 3:17-19 that man has fallen and work became a curse for him. Genesis tells us that sin distorted the relationships with God, with oneself, with other people, and with the rest of the creation. So, God prepared a plan to rescue us. In short, God sent Jesus to redeem us, which is the costly salvation we enjoy. Skipping a lot of significant theological concepts in between, we now arrive at the end of days (!) because we need a good concept of the end in order to know the direction for today.
A common misconception is that in the end (末世), the world will be annihilated and then a band new world is created again. If this is the case, any work we do today will be meaningless, since they will all be destroyed. But the biblical description of the end is not like that. The end is not total destruction. This is why the work we do today, whether "church work" or not, has a value.
Before we go further, let have a short summary:
1. Calling is not about a career choice. It is about what God wants to do with you life.
2. Any work we do could be for Christ, including "secular work" as long as they are not against biblical teaching.
3. Work is not a curse originally.
4. The end is not destruction; therefore, what we do today is not meaningless.
One signature of a Christian is that he has peace. This is exactly God's plan because Christ restore our relationship with God, with ourselves, with other people, and with the rest of creations. Therefore, a Christian who has found his calling will find peace in his work. He will also make peace with people around him. The implication of this is that responding to God's calling is matter of how we live our lives instead of making choices in certain points of our lives. We will discover more if we read Gen 1:26-30 and 3:17-19 again:
1:29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
1:30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food."
3:17 [God to Adam] ...Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
3:18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
Note what they eat! Before man's sinning, he eats plants and fruits while the beasts eat plants. After his fall, "eat the plants of the field". He is compared to a beast!
Salvation restores us back to God's original purpose, but are we still choosing to eat plants?
3:17 says that work has become a painful toil. What is worse is that the duration is "all the days of your life". But let us look at Psalm 23:6:
Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
The man who responds to God's calling lives his life with goodness and love from the LORD all the days of his life. When we talk about the Kingdom of God, it is really not very far away. Today Earth is mixed with bits of Heaven; in the future, Heaven is mixed with bits of Earth. This is why we pray:
thy kingdom come,thy will be done on earthas it is in heaven.
