Calling and Election

As I travel around the world preaching the gospel in numerous churches and cities, time and time again I see first-hand the searing pain felt by people with unfulfilled dreams. Some have heard of our exploits in the mission field to which we have devoted our lives and it convicts them in their hearts.

Tear-filled eyes gaze at me after services as these people bare their hearts to me, confessing that God called them to reach the nations years ago. "I wish I had gone," they sigh. The seeds of this dream were planted in them by God, yet they aborted it.

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In this short article the case is made that every Christian is called at some level to operate in the ministry of helps. Let us not be high-minded. Whether we are also called to be apostles, or teachers, or workers of miracles, the Bible nowhere says, "Do all have the ministry of helps? "

A look at 2 Timothy 1:8-11 where Paul talks about the fact that we are saved and called with a holy calling.

2Pe 1:5 But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,
2Pe 1:6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,
2Pe 1:7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.
2Pe 1:8 For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
2Pe 1:9 For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

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Romans 9 is perhaps the passage which most lends itself to interpretations which portray God as a capricious, arbitrary tyrant. This passage had long troubled me, because if "Love" has any meaning that relates to desiring the good of others, then it was hard to reconcile these interpretations with the Scripture that "God is Love".

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I was brought up in a church which taught many good things from the Word of God, for which I thank God. But as we grow and seek God, we may discover that many of the things that we were taught are systems of INTERPRETATION of the Word of God, and not the Word of God itself. There is a difference, and the difference is important. What is at stake here is nothing less than the knowledge of the character of God.  read more »