It’s a common enough question. So many people have me asked this question as if I’m the recruiter down at the Lord’s army. My questioner wants to know will he have the Special Forces style glamour of overseas missions in a hostile land? Will he be drafted to be a culture maker, through music, or through growing a para-church ministry for deep pocketed businessmen, I mean, people of influence? Maybe he will be called to be a prestigious professor at the war college, training up future pastors.
The answer is surprisingly simple. What is God’s will for your life? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. You don’t have to go to seminary to do that. Wailing on a guitar in front of thousands of adoring fans isn’t likely the plan. You don’t have to wear a power tie and listen to increasing your vocabulary tapes to reach the powerful. All you have to do is… work.
The battle for the kingdom is not some grand version of capture the flag. Jesus doesn’t call us to some colossal game of king of the hill wherein we join the hordes out there trying to climb the mountain to wield the levers of culture. What separates us from the world isn’t simply that we are better at operating the levers, but that we understand that the only way to get the levers is to stop clamoring for them, that the only way to change the world is to change ourselves.
That culture making power comes through private prayer, and the foolishness of preaching. The weapons of our warfare aren’t rocket launchers and WMD’s, but one simple stumbling block, the cross of Jesus Christ. What will tear down the gates of hell will not be a frontal assault with a battering ram, but the slow and steady work of fruit producing branches from the one true vine.
Should we not, each morning when we wake, recognize that our calling for that day is to grow in grace, to, to use an inorganic idiom, become more sanctified? There is no program, no study guide. These things do not exist, on purpose, deliberately. All there is is “Abide in Me.” Let’s remember what we know- we are to bear fruit. The answer to “Abide” is found in “Me.”
For therein is His glory. A certain farmer when out to sow. But this farmer scattered no seed on the rocky ground. This farmer, the one whom Mary “mistook” for the gardener, has promised that having begun a good work in us, He will complete it until the end.
The best part about the call to cultivate fruit is that we are the fruit that He is cultivating. The great thing about the call to working out our own salvation in fear and in trembling is that it is He that is working in us both to will and to do His good pleasure. As we work in all diligence, we rest in the arms of Jesus. And one day, all His bundles will bow, in joy, before Him.