The Call is an Act of Creation.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe readings from Epiphany to Easter
follow a logic.
We are seeing Jesus revealed
more and more to the wider world.
Jesus is recognized by the foreign nations.
Jesus is baptized and anointed
by the Holy Spirit
and confirmed as the beloved son of God.
Jesus becomes the one who baptizes us with the Holy Spirit.
When you are baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit
something else happens.
God calls you.
The power of the Holy Spirit
becomes a motivation
to follow Jesus
and become part of the kingdom.
I have been highlighting that
the Christian life is not a set of beliefs
backed up with moral teaching.
Christianity is life
in the Kingdom of God
through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Christ in you
transforms you.
I have said this many times:
Jesus Christ
did not come
to start a religion.
Jesus Christ came to establish his Kingdom.
They are very different things.
We have seen this in recent years
as politicians have tried to reframe
the first amendment in the United States
from the Free Exercise of Religion
to the freedom of worship--
in other words you have freedom to live a
Christian life out in the open and freely--
to the freedom of personal beliefs and private worship.
In other words,
you are free to be in secret,
as long as the secular woke agenda is not challenged
in public.
And as we have seen,
even if your private worship conflicts with the agenda
it can be interrupted and stopped.
This is hard tyrrany.
Christianity
always comes into conflict
with governments
and systems
trying to be the Kingdom of God
without Jesus.
In Matthew 4,
Jesus takes his place in Capernaum.
He buys a house,
and the early years of his ministry are based here.
He establishes a hub.
And then he goes down to the sea of Galilee,
and he finds a handful of fishermen.
And he calls to them.
Follow me,
and I will make you fishers of men.
When you learn to listen to God,
the Lord will immediately
test your loyalty.
What Kingdom are you living in?
You can live in the Kingdom of this world.
You can live in the Kingdom of your own flesh.
You can live in the Kingdom of the devil.
None of them are the Kingdom of God.
This word "call"
in Greek,
Kaleo,
appears 148 times in the New Testament.
It is the greek word used for the Hebrew word
"cara."
This word first appears at the beginning of Genesis
when God speaks and he calls the light day
and the dark night.
In the Bible,
and especially in the Gospels,
the word "call" has an intrinsic meaning.
The call defines a person
and calls them out of one reality
and into another.
So Jesus calls fishermen,
and in the call itself
is the power for those men
to leave their nets,
leave their family legacy,
leave their place in society,
and follow Jesus.
And in the call
is another reality.
The call defines you.
So Jesus calls them and says,
from now on
you will be fishers of men.
Notice what Jesus does here.
He does not say
You were once fishermen,
and now I am going to make you
Christian accountants.
No.
The call of God
transforms what they are,
their natural gifts and abilities,
into something much higher.
They are still fishermen,
just a very different kind.
They are still going to need patience.
They are still going to need physical strength.
They are still going to have to work together as a team.
But now,
the call takes their natural reality
and elevates it to something higher.
The call raises you up.
Many artists and creative people
hear the call of God
and they think that God is calling them to be a missionary
and do something spiritual.
Sadly,
this comes from the Protestant error
that being an artist is bad.
What Jesus is calling an artist to
is something higher,
the call is be a revealer of the unseen
through the work of their hands.
The call of God
is a "rhema" word.
It is a living word
and whenever you encounter the living word
of God,
you encounter what is described
in Isaiah 55.
Just like rain and snow
cause growth to happen
so the word of God contains in it
the power to fulfill itself.
The call of God
is how God creates.
The Word is the seed
and contains the life force
that will bring fulfillment.
We will see this in the story of Jesus
and these fishermen.
Jesus calls them from their old life
into a higher calling.
Then later on he calls them again
He calls them apostles.
And in the apostolic calling,
it says in Luke
that the calling "created them" apostles.
The Call
is an act of creation.
Something new is formed
out of the old.
This is the calling to your true self,
the real you.
The call of God
is an act of creation.
Our community
is not religious.
Over the years I have had to help many broken hearted
artists
who believed that God was calling them
into ministry.
And mistakenly,
they saw that Jesus told the fishermen to leave their nets,
and so they left their brushes
and their craft behind.
I find it interesting,
that in all my years of working with artists
musicians rarely go through this,
because the church values musicians.
In fact a lot of musicians get put into leadership
before they are ready
and they their immaturity is pander to,
when they should have been fathered into maturity.
Those of us in the other arts
are encouraged to
give up their craft.
Actors leave the theatre,
painters stop painting.
Eventually,
God leads them back and shows them
that what they do is valuable.
But often there is a lot of pain and hurt to process.
Sadly,
sometimes when an artist gets a call from God,
they get religious
and go into religious jobs.
And it doesn't go well.
The call of God is not religious
and God doesn't call you into "ministry."
The call of God is
part of the message of Jesus.
Metanoia,
for the Kingdom of God is at hand.
Change your thinking,
Change your life,
and Get your head into a Kingdom of God
way of thinking and doing.
Come follow me
and I am going to raise up all your natural ability
and skill
and I am going to transform it
into something much higher
and more noble than what you ever thought was possible.
God calls you
and he says
my thoughts are not your thoughts
my ways are not your ways.
My power is made perfect in your weakness.
I can take what you are
and who you are
the real you
and I can make you
into a rock
that the gates of hell cannot withstand.
And in the call
and in the word
is the power to do it,
and the power to see it happen.
There is another piece of the call of God
that many of us do not understand.
Sometimes I hear people translate the
things that I say
into "Christianese."
I don't speak "Christianese."
I try to speak Kingdom and normal.
When I say,
"Listen to the Lord and do what he tells you,"
the Christianese speaker
translates it into
"Listen to the Lord and be obedient."
That's not what Jesus said.
Jesus said come follow me and I will make you a fisher of men.
Jesus didn't say,
come follow me and obey me.
When God calls us
and when God gives us a direction
and a word
that word is not a command
like you give your trained dog.
And if you obey it God will give you a biscuit.
No.
The word from God
is for you
and for your good.
And when you do the things that God asks
you to do,
it is going to bless and benefit you
and it is going to give God glory.
Sometimes God asks you to do what at first
seems like a crazy thing.
God called these fishermen
from their business investment
and from their family identity.
God called me from my regular art job
and my freelance art business.
I still have my brushes,
but I don't make stuff for rich ladies in big houses anymore.
I make little copies of Jesus
the perfect image of the father.
I am still an artist,
just like Peter was still a fisherman.
And the call of God,
the word from God,
has been what keeps me going.
We keep going through periods of no money,
times of real hardship,
travel,
toil,
and trouble.
The word of God,
the call
keeps it going.
Because in that word
there is the power to carry it out.
This is the difference between a ministry
and a vocation.
Some of you
may be wrestling with things
that God is asking you to do.
Sometimes even little acts of doing what God invites you to do
seem like giant steps.
The call always confronts your loyalty.
And often we discover that just "the way the world works"
"what people will think"
is a bigger monster than we can face.
The call of God
to leave the nets,
to leave mother and father,
to step out of the boat,
or to embrace the journey to who you really are
is a scary one that requires risk.
But when we do,
we discover that Jesus Christ
is very kind
and very dangerous,
and very good.
Come follow me
Jesus said
and I will make you everything you ever dreamed
and more
just not the way you thought.
Today I want to end this time by praying
first for those
who have heard God
and been too afraid to follow where he was leading.
Now let's pray for those who left real things
real gifts, abilities and careers
and who tried to do the Christian thing.
I meet so many artist who feel guilty about being artists
and who are not free to walk because of this nagging feeling.
Finally,
let's pray for those who maybe
are hearing the voice of the Lord
who is calling,
Come follow me,
leave your nets
and I will make you a fisher of men.
Some of you may feel the call to a consecrated life
a life of full time service to the Kingdom.
This may look like a religious vocation.
If this is you,
please make an appointment with me
and lets talk.
Thanks for reading and listening.
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