God’s Will First, Then My Calling

I want to tell about an incident where I failed to love God. It has been a propensity in my life. God has given me a calling, and I don’t know how far-reaching it is, but He has called me to serve. Often I host people in my home who come to visit our ministry. I know He’s called me to do it, but I confess that I can put that calling first, before the motive of love for Him and the choice to do God’s will.

Caught Up in My Calling

The Lord splayed it open to me through a very practical thing. One day some people were staying in my home and the Lord was moving on a movie playing in our living room called “The Tree of Life”. It is my calling to fix the meals and I do that in His joy many times. But that day I went into the calling thinking, “I’ve got to get this food fixed!”

My kitchen is next to the living room and it was hard to work quietly. I kept looking at the clock and fretting, and the whole thing became chaos. I even burned my arm trying to retrieve something out of the oven. I don’t want to belabor it, but it showed me that in my heart, in my ‘old woman,’ I am a Martha. I can go into tasks with all my zeal, charging ahead with the attitude of “I can do it!” When I do, I lose what He showed me just this morning in Psalm 40:10, “Let it be written of Me in the Book of Life, ‘I delight to do Your will, O God!’” His will…not my calling!

Oh, Lord, let me stay before You and let me minister to You…and if You see fit for me to fix meals, then I will fix meals. If You want me to greet the stranger and welcome him into my home, then I’ll do that. But it is Your will, O God, that I want to delight to do. Let the Lord of Hosts, my Savior, do what HE wills in me. I confess that sin and I commit myself to delight to do Your will and Your will alone.