Episode 1329: The Weight of Your Call

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,329 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:07] Orly Wahba: I'm Orly Wahba. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Focus on kindness is a key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

[00:00:41] Scott Maderer: Jesus ask us to get started before we know, and then along the way, during the journey, while we're in the call and living the call, that's when more clarity will come.[00:01:00]

[00:01:00] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship podcast, learn to invest in yourself. Invest in others.

[00:01:20] And develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:31] In today's spiritual foundation episode, I talk about Matthew chapter nine, verses nine through 13 and 18 through 26. I share how we all struggle to understand our call or is that calls, and I also talk about how the feeling of the call is not certain, but rather a journey. Matthew chapter nine, verses nine through 13 and 18 through 26 says, as Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew [00:02:00] sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, follow me.

[00:02:03] And he got up and followed him, and as he said at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him in his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? But when he heard this, he said, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, go and learn what this means.

[00:02:26] I desire mercy, not sacrifice for I have come to call not the righteous but sinners while he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him saying, my daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her and she will live. And Jesus got up and followed him with his disciples.

[00:02:45] Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak for she said to herself, if only I touch his cloak, I will be made. Jesus turned and seeing her. He said, take heart, daughter. [00:03:00] Your faith has made you well and instantly the woman was made well, when Jesus came to the leader's house and saw the flute players in the crowd making a commotion, he said, go away for the girl is not dead, but sleeping, and they laughed at him.

[00:03:13] But when the crowds had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand and the girl got up and the report of this spread throughout that district over the next few weeks I'm gonna be talking some about a call and I talk often in the podcast. The theme of the podcast has to do with understanding and living out our call, and I've talked with guests about that.

[00:03:38] It's something that's shown up at various times. But we still need to talk about what it means to be called. What is a call? How does it feel like, and is it even something that we want? A call isn't always easy to carry. Sometimes being called sends us to [00:04:00] places that we may not want to go to, or places that we're not sure about.

[00:04:05] There's often unanswered questions, and when we respond to the call, those questions don't suddenly. Get answered. Even if that call comes from one we call Lord or from a friend or trusted person, no matter what, there's a difficulty around following a call. There's questions of what am I doing? What have I gotten myself into?

[00:04:27] Is this a call really from God? And if it is, then why isn't everything working out perfectly? Why is there no? Why is there still pain? Why is there no perfection? Why is it not? Exactly the way I think it should be. Keep in mind a call is often said as if it's something that only the clergy have. Pastors are called to serve God, but it's actually something that comes to everyone.

[00:04:57] Everyone who follows the path of following [00:05:00] Christ is often called. We're all called at some level for the duty of the transformation of the world. But within that, we've got a lot of different specific calls. Sometimes a call to a place, to a task, to a way of living, to a relationship, whatever it is we are, we're called in many ways throughout our life, and those calls don't always stay the same.

[00:05:27] Often they change Matthew, If you think about in this gospel, the example of Matthew's just sitting there minding his business, doing his job, collecting taxes. It doesn't call him out as necessarily somebody who was dishonest or do he get badly or anything else, but he's just minding his own business and Jesus walks by and says, let's go and it.

[00:05:49] The next answer is Matthew got up and went. He just got up and left the booth where he is collecting taxes. You have to picture, there's people standing in line waiting to pay their taxes and [00:06:00] the guy that's there to collect them just gets up and leaves. I wonder how long they stayed in line and how long they waited before they finally went on and did it somewhere else or gave up.

[00:06:10] We don't know much of Matthew's story here and the verse before this one, Jesus is off at dinner hanging out with an unsavory crowd. Trying to get his point across to unsavory people and we don't know what happened or was Matthew. There was Matthew. Had he heard Jesus before, what made him easily answer his call?

[00:06:36] We don't know if he was thinking about his job, if he was tired of the abuse that he was feeling there. Maybe he was upset that he was being forced to do this. Maybe he thought he was good at this job. No idea. But wait, what am I doing? He responded and he heard the call and he went. Now, one of the other lectionary passages this week is around Genesis, [00:07:00] and we hear the story of Abram In there, Abram becomes Abraham.

[00:07:05] Abram responds to a call. He responds to a call that makes him the patriarch that we call Abraham, but he doesn't get that name until later in the Genesis passage that's used this week. He's still called Abram. He's the son of Terah who had died in Hiran and Haran wasn't really home. They were from a place even further south and east, close to the Persian Gulf.

[00:07:33] What would nowadays be in the Turkey area? But Abram was called to a new home and he was asked to leave, and it says that he set off for Cana, but they'd only made it to Huran. You know what that's like. You've probably had an experience where you had a dream. You were going to a certain place or a certain destination.

[00:07:54] You had certain things and conquering that you were gonna do, dragons, you were gonna slay, and yet [00:08:00] you didn't get all the way. Maybe you didn't accomplish everything that you had imagined. You did well, you made it most of the way, but you didn't finish the journey. And you may me wonder, did Abram hear those dreams from his father as he sat around in the evening, dreams of going on to the original destination.

[00:08:19] Dreams of finishing the journey. And at some point Abram actually set out and went forward. The truth is we wanna be certain. We want to know where we're going and what's gonna happen along the way. And when we hear the Bible stories, often we read into it a certainty that they have. But the passage in Genesis about Abram leaving says, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, not the land that I've already shown you.

[00:08:54] There's no certainty here. Abram was told by [00:09:00] God to go and he went. And he went to the land that I will show you. God wasn't asking for certainty. He wasn't asking for a final answer, and he wasn't telling Abram all of the answers of the question and how it was going to turn out. He didn't even promise him that it would be an easy journey or everything would go his way.

[00:09:23] God doesn't want us to wait until we are certain. God doesn't want us to figure it all out first and put out everything and map it all out and know all of the answers before we get started. Jesus, ask us to get started before we know, and then along the way during the journey. While we're in the call and living the call, that's when more clarity will come.

[00:09:57] Thanks for listening.[00:10:00]

[00:10:03] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen. But act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor. Go over to facebook.com/inspired stewardship and like our Facebook page and market.

[00:10:33] That you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there. Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.[00:11:00]