This is What You Do

For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. (Romans 11:29)

God does not change His mind about what He has called you to. That is what this verse says. Without repentance means without reversal, or without taking it back. God knew what He was doing when He called you. He knew every failure you would ever have, every season you would walk through, every time you would fall short. And He called you anyway.

That calling did not come with an expiration date. But here is the thing about a calling—it does you little good if you treat it casually. The practical steps that remove fog and darkness from your life are not things you try a few times to see if something happens. They are not a spiritual experiment you run when you feel like it and set aside when life gets busy. They are a lifestyle. That means this is what you do.

A man who has spent his life pastoring a church knows what he does. He knows who he is. Someone can sit across from him and try to tell him how to run a church without a single day of pastoral experience behind them, and it will not move him. Why? Because this is what he does. He has obeyed command after command in that specific calling until the gift and the man became inseparable. You cannot talk him out of it.

That is the kind of settled identity God wants every believer to have in their calling and in their walk with Him. When your spiritual disciplines become a lifestyle rather than an occasional practice, being settled develops. The fog does not have the same grip on a person who has been consistently pressing into God day after day as it does on someone who picks it up and puts it down.

Practical Application

This is what you should do every day because you understand what is at stake and you understand who you are in God. Your gifts are permanent. Your calling is permanent. The only variable is whether you will pursue both with passion.

1 Corinthians 7:20; Ephesians 4:1