To, Not From
How God Gives Direction
Photo by Pablo García Saldaña on Unsplash
I have always been a firm believer that God doesn’t call people from; he calls people to.
Look at the Bible. In Genesis 12, we read the call of Abram:
“The Lord said to Abram:
Go from your land,
your relatives,
and your father’s house
to the land that I will show you.”
God didn’t tell Abram where specifically he would be going, but the call was not to simply leave; the call was to go to the land that God would show him. There are plenty of other examples of God calling people throughout the Bible. He doesn’t call us away without calling us towards something else.
Think of this in terms of sin. God never tells us in the Bible to simply stop sinning. Before you quote one of the verses about not sinning, let me explain. If you were to stop sinning today for the rest of time, would you be saved? Would you be worthy of getting into heaven? No. The threshold of being in God’s presence is not about a lack of sin, but rather, a position of righteousness. If you stopped sinning, you would not be righteous; you would be morally neutral. God calls you to himself to be washed clean and made righteous. He doesn’t simply call you away from sin.
Consider some of the “big” testimonies you’ve heard. You know, the ones that involve sex, drugs, and rock and roll. People lived a very rough life and then came to Christ. What is God’s call to them? It isn’t to stop partying and get rid of the drugs. He calls them to follow him and he will wash them clean. It isn’t to wash themselves clean and then he will accept them. He does the washing. He calls them to himself. To follow him will involve rejecting the former life of sin, but the call of God is towards himself, not just away from sin.
We might know this, but we often don’t believe it. We want to quit. We want to stop dealing with struggles. We want to get away from difficult people. We want the easy way out. We tend to want to be removed from the hardship, not redirected towards something better.
Furthermore, we have some sort of salvific framework that includes being “good enough”…whatever that means. We think that to be a “good” Christian means to not sin as much as we used to. We think that if we sin less and read our Bible more, then God will be inclined to give us what we want because we are running away from the bad, even if we are not actually running towards him.
Maybe God is calling you to take a step of faith. Maybe he’s calling you to run to him instead of your habit of running to the bottle. Maybe he’s calling you to turn to him for the first time. Maybe he’s calling you to turn back to him for the 573rd time…this week alone.
Whatever it is, he isn’t calling you from, he’s calling you to. He is the prize. He is the reward. If you simply choose not to take the path towards the bad, you don’t get the prize. Choose him. Run towards him.
He is the prize.