The Christian Awaits Quietly His Call

Accepting one’s callings in life is among the most difficult things for a Christian. A man desires a better situation, a pastor desires a different congregation, the idealist longs to live in a different time and place. The term ἐπιθυμία (epithumia, “desire”) and its cognates is sometimes used positively in the New Testament, but more often is associated with the corrupted human heart that drives a man to sin. Passages such as Romans 7 and James 1 particularly note the pattern that desire gives birth to sin, and sin to death. The desire for a satisfying life is—because of the inverted heart—actually a longing for death. These lusts are part of the passing-away world (1 John 2:15-17).

This is particularly true in the desire for a different (set of) calling(s). In that desire, wisdom counsels looking to God and waiting for Him to act – and in the meantime does only what is before him. S.C. Malan writes:

The Christian awaits quietly his call from above; he receives it as it comes and enters in peace the road that opens before him; and yet he does not himself come to it, but he makes use of his abilities and of his acquirements in that sphere, in which he finds himself placed; without objection to a high appointment, and without reproaching others for his being overlooked. For you may be sure, that God’s Providence, after having endowed a man with special gifts, always takes care that they shall not remain idle, and opens before him some sphere of usefulness, by which those gifts shall be turned to account.

S. C. Malan, “Meditation IV: For the Friday of the Second Week in Lent,” in Meditations for Every Wednesday and Friday in Lent, on a Prayer of S. Ephraem, trans. S. C. Malan (London: Joseph Masters, 1859), 64.

And again:

But even without this high position in society, it is always possible for a man to do much that is really useful, so as to be first and foremost in it for the good of others, if that please him. How much good there may be found around many a path not yet made; and how many blessed deeds to be done, that are not yet begun! Let us only consider, without losing courage because of our not being raised on high to be seen of men; let us begin to act and to do, though it be little and seen of God only, that which no one has ever yet done;—thus we shall really be first to frame for ourselves a new sphere of usefulness and of distinction. (Malan, pp65f)

“In the way of Your judgments, O LORD, we have waited for You; the desire of our soul is for Your name and for the remembrance of You” (Isaiah 26:8).