Vocation (Calling) - What God Want Me To Do
Friday, February 16th, 2007
As my family and friends probably know, I’ve always been kind of a self-improvement junkie. Trying to be better at whatever I’m interested in. Most recently, my search for self-improvement lead me to ask, “What does God want me to do?” I had some stops and starts when I thought God was giving me “signs”, but I never felt like I was doing God’s will. This kind of thinking along with hearing a few times how the Bible is “God’s owner’s manual for us” clicked in me because somewhere inside I knew Christianity was more than this. Since then, I have fallen back to my Lutheran roots and come to recognize that Christianity is about my sin and Jesus’ saving work on the cross, NOT God’s right rules for living.
So, how has this helped me figure out what God wants me to do? The Lutheran doctrine of vocation is simply: God has put you where you are to live in faith toward Him and in love toward your neighbor. I found a very simple to read and practical article called “Locus and Focus: God’s Will for Your Daily Life.” Two sections that made me see more clearly:
Why do we agonize so much over God’s will? Isn’t it because we secretly think that it is up to us to please God with our own good works? But nothing could be further from the truth. It isn’t up to you to please God. This is what Grace is all about. God is already pleased with you because of Jesus’ good works, Jesus’ perfect obedience and Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus did all of this for you. In fact, God couldn’t be more pleased with you than He already is for Jesus’ sake.
But no, instead of seeing the will of God right there under my nose, in the needs of my wife, kids, family co-workers, I speculate about God’s will, I invent things to do that I think would please God. These self-invented works, no matter how much good they might do, are not good works at all. They haven’t come from faith in what Jesus has done for me to please God, but from a futile attempt to please God myself.
The above passages tell me there is nothing for me to do to please God because Jesus has already done so, but they still don’t tell me how I should act. Here’s the passage that does that:
When a Christian wants to know what God’s will is, he need look no further than to his station in life and his neighbor’s needs. This is enough to keep the Christian busy for the rest of his life. The Christian is free to turn his attention to his neighbor because the Christian no longer needs to worry about pleasing God.
We are saved because of Jesus not because of what we do, and in gratitude we help our neighbors. And where we see our neighbor in need, we see what God wants us to do.
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