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Knowing God's Will #10: Calling #3:"You are Here"
1 Timothy 1:1-7
by The Rev. Clancy Nixon
Church of the Holy Spirit
Ashburn, Virginia
When I go to an unfamiliar shopping mall, I look for the map that orients me to
the different stores. I light up when I find the map, where I see the comforting words,
"You are Here." I can see where I am in relation to everything else in the mall. That is a
comforting thought, but there is a sense of incompleteness, for the map is not my
destination. The only reason you want to know that "You are Here," is so that you can get
"There." You and I want to go to a particular store, not to linger at the signpost that gets
us there. And that is the rub for many of us in our lives. Often, when we consider the
place where we are now, we see it more as a way to get to the place where we want to go,
rather than the place of divine appointment.
Open your blue Bibles to page 1174, First Timothy, chapter one, verse 1. I'm
gong to be referring to it frequently, so please open it. Let's read that together... 1
Timothy 1:1: "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of
Christ Jesus our hope..." 1 Tim. 1:1.
In verse 1, Paul tells us that he is an apostle by the command of God. Some
translations render it by the royal command of God. Paul was commissioned by the King
directly. Christ the King encountered him in a blinding light on the road to Damascus.
Paul has received what Os Guinness calls a special calling from God, which is a kind of
calling that many people do not receive. A special calling is a task or mission laid on an
individual through a direct, specific, supernatural communication from God. Paul's
commission is to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. Contrast that special calling with the
ordinary calling that every Christian has: that is, a sense of life purpose and life task in
response to God's call to follow him. I do believe that, as we listen to God over a period
of time, we can discern God's call on our lives; but I also believe that discerning our
calling requires more than just listening to God. Whenever we hear the rhema word of
God, spoken from his spirit to our spirit, it is a subjective experience. It is a holy thing,
but all subjective words need to be tested in the body. Gifts and call are discerned in
community. When Saul of Tarsus was converted to the Lordship of Christ, the Christian
community needed to be convinced of two things. First, they needed to know that Saul's
conversion was real, since he had persecuted the church. They had to trust him not to
betray them. Second, they needed to be convinced that his subjective experience of call as
an Apostle was real. When your calling in life is at issue, it typically takes people a lot of
time to discern and affirm that call. That is probably one reason that immediately after his
conversion, Paul spent three years in Arabia, most likely being trained in Christian
leadership. (see Galatians 1:17).
There is often a lag between the calling and the sending.
You graduates know about the lag between the calling and the sending. You have
experienced waiting and working to be able to get to the next stage in fulfilling your
calling. In many cases, you have finished one school, only to have the privilege of
attending anther one, before you can fully enter into your calling. We might all wish for
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a simpler day, like when Jesus called Matthew, and said, "Come, follow me." Seminary
was not required, nor was a discernment committee. Matthew left his tax booth and
followed the Lord. Notice that following the call of Christ for Matthew was not an
intellectual assent to the gospel; it was an obedient following. Following a calling can't
be done in theory. It can only be lived by obedience. Those of you in school now, I hope
you will see your time of concentrated education as a calling in itself, not just as
preparation for real life.
I first began to discern my calling in life at age 35. I read a book by Richard
Bolles, an Episcopal pastor and author of the popular book, What Color is Your
Parachute? The book that arrested me was not Parachute, but a different one called The
Three Boxes of Life: an Introduction to Life/Work Planning. Bolles says that we tend to
look at life in three stages, or boxes of time: The first box is our education, the second is
our career, and the third is our retirement. Bolles encourages us to think outside the box
and to think functionally, rather than chronologically, and make a life plan. The three
functions of the boxes are learning, work, and leisure. Bolles says if we live life fully in
all our stages of life, we will be engaged in lifelong learning, lifelong work, and lifelong
leisure. So true! As I grasped this simple truth, I began to dream about a life plan, and I
decided that I would stay in the practice of law until I was 52. As a Securities Lawyer,
that was the age I had projected that my stock options would mature with two million
dollars in the bank. I'd retire from paid work, and then pursue full-time ministry, because
that was my passion in life. It was a convenient plan; it did not require faith for me to
believe God for finances to provide for my family. How acutely aware of our financial
responsibilities we become when we consider our calling. Instead of asking God when he
wanted me to become a pastor, I was, in effect, asking my bank account. It was like I was
praying, "O bank account, when can I afford to become a pastor?" In case you are
wondering, unless you decide this early in life, when you are still college age, the answer
to this question is usually the same: you can never afford to change your profession. The
cost is high for mid-life change, but the cost of staying can be higher in other ways. I'll
take up my story again later.
Back in First Timothy, chapter one, verse 3, the Apostle Paul tells his apprentice,
Timothy, "As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus...." The
book of Acts tells us that Paul had had a dream of the man from Macedonia calling him
to come help them, and Paul saw that dream as the call of God for him to go there. In this
way the gospel was first taken to Europe. Evidently, Timothy had wanted to accompany
Paul on this journey, for Paul had urged him to stay in Ephesus at that time, and here in
verse 3 Paul urges Timothy one more time to stay there. Timothy was here, and he
wanted to be there. Whenever Paul speaks of Timothy, he has such warm admiration for
the lad. Here in verse 2, Paul calls him a true son in the faith. Timothy was from Lystra in
Galatia, and from the time of Paul's second missionary journey to Lystra, he was Paul's
constant companion and trusted emissary. It must have been hard for Timothy to be apart
from his father in the faith.
Yet here in this letter came the call for Timothy to stay in Ephesus. He tells
Timothy: Bloom where you are planted. Both circumstances and authority constrain
Timothy to do what he does not want to do. The circumstances are that the Gnostics
have infiltrated the church, and Paul tells Timothy he needs to stay in Ephesus to make
sure that the Church there is not corrupted by false teaching. I can sympathize with
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Timothy's desire to flee church doctrinal battles and to focus on pure evangelism and
discipleship. Friends, while I believe that need alone is not the totality of a call, I also
believe that the need of your family, the need of your church and the need of humanity
ought to be a factor in discerning your calling. Oftentimes your dreams need to be put on
hold for the good of others. This is true for wives, for husbands, for children, and even
for churches. That is a way you can manifest the grace, mercy and peace that Paul speaks
of in verse 2. Circumstances constrain us and help define our callings at different life
stages. There is the calling of a mother to her little ones; the calling of a father to provide
for his children; and the calling of the teenager to respect their parents even as they begin
to choose their own life.
Timothy's godly authority tells him that he is needed in a particular place at a
particular time. Who better to know what is best for us, what our calling is, than our
godly authority? Even when we are grown, our parents know us as well as anyone, and
we are wise to continue to seek and consider their counsel. So also with your mentors,
your home group pastors, your mothers and fathers in the faith. In cases where your
authority is not godly, then you must be very careful. Even ungodly authority, Paul says,
is instituted by God, so we must consider its claims on us. However, as Peter and John
told the Sanhedrin in Acts 4:19, where the ungodly authority pressures you to go against
the word of God, then you must obey God, and not men.
At the time I was making my life plan, my mentor in the faith, Ron Soderquist,
who worked with Campus Crusade for Christ, was encouraging me to go into full time
ministry. In those days, if you had asked me who I was, I'd have said, "I'm a lawyer." In
this city, for most people, we are what we do. Calling reverses that process: calling says,
"Do what you are." Law was never my passion; I didn't have what one partner I worked
for called "fire in the belly." That meant an all-consuming desire to stay up late
researching cases on commercial litigation. Ron saw that my passion was ministry.
Calling connects with your passion. Yesterday I went door to door with 3 others in
Southern Walk surveying our neighbors about their worship preferences. I loved it! It's
Jesus work. Halleluiah! It stirred me up to knock on doors. In his second letter to
Timothy, Paul tells him, "Stir up your gifts!" I have a passion, and a gift of evangelism,
and I need to exercise it often, or a part of me withers. I don't know about you, but I want
to do all the Jesus stuff. I want to preach on the highways and byways. I want to recruit
and train leaders, in small groups and one on one. I want to pray for the sick, and see
them get well. I want to see God do miracles among us as we believe him to bring the
Kingdom in.
Call is discerned in community. I went to everyone who had been important to me
in my life, and I asked them: could this call be for me? I spoke to over twenty people, and
they all said yes, to a person, except two family members, who were not believers. I
didn't expect them to understand. I submitted to the process that my godly authority at
Church of the Apostles in Fairfax had in place for me. There was a 10 year lag between
my first discerning that I was called to be a church planter and my coming to Loudoun to
plant this church.
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I remember when I was sixteen at the Episcopal summer camp on Lake Erie
which was my only church. That summer, several people said things to me like, "Clancy,
have you ever thought about becoming a priest? You'd make a good pastor." I didn't
know what to tell them. Then one day, I heard someone ask that same question of a
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counselor named Mark Honness. Mark said this: "I've thought about it, but I have not
heard the call. I've seen people become pastors who are not truly called, and that is a bad
thing. So until God calls me personally, I won't become a pastor." When I heard that, I
thought, "That sounds good; I can use that." So when people asked me about becoming a
pastor, I repeated what Mark had said. And I went my own way and became a lawyer,
because I wanted to change the world. That's why I came to Washington.
It was not until many years later that I learned how to listen to God. When I
learned how to hear his still small voice, I knew that I was to be a church planter, but I
was not clear about when to leave my life as a lawyer. After all, I had settled on a life
plan. It was when I was on a Men's Retreat with Church of the Apostles in 1992, when
Clay McLean was teaching on Listening to God. Clay told us to get alone and go listen to
God, and so I did. Now my pastor, David Harper, was the one person I had not
approached with my discernment about becoming a pastor. I made the mistake of having
my pastor be the last to know. God told me to go to David with my discernment that
same day. I questioned God, telling him that I thought I had time to wait, since I would
do that when I turned 52. Then God said to me, "No, you don't have time to wait. You
are already nineteen years late. I have been calling you to do this since you were sixteen
years old." Then I argued with God, saying, "But Lord, I couldn't hear you when I was
young. It is only in my thirties that I have learned to discern your still small voice. I
couldn't hear you then; what do you mean you've been calling me since I was sixteen?"
Then God rebuked me strongly. He said, "You wicked and prideful servant. Just because
you could not hear my still small voice then, you conclude that I was not speaking to you
at that time? I called you then in the only way you could hear me. I spoke to you through
other people, but you made excuses and turned away to follow your own dreams. You are
not early; you are very late. Now go immediately to David."
So I did.... It has made all the difference.
I encourage you to ask the Lord this question: where is God calling you now? Is
he calling you, like Timothy, to stay in your Ephesus? You might want to go there, but
God might be calling you to be right where you are to bloom where you are planted. Or
is he calling you out, like Paul in his second letter to Timothy called three times for
Timothy to come to him in Rome? Only God can finally answer that question for you.
Jesus prayed that the Lord of the Harvest would send forth laborers into the harvest
fields. The question is not are you called to labor; the question is which field are you
called to labor in, and which tools are you to use. Seek him at every season of life, and he
will reveal himself to you.
Let's pray.
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