Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Calling
- Calling asks whether or not God has called the person to the particular work at this point in their life.
1 Kings
13 gives us a fairly unusual story to follow.
Here we get to experience a prophet deliver the word of God. Then we get to see a king’s hand withered and
then just as miraculously restored! Then
we hear how the prophet turns from obedience into disobedience and ultimately
loses his life over that decision. What
is at the heart of all of these things?
Calling.
You see,
God called the prophet. The voice of the
Lord came to the prophet and instructed him.
So long as the prophet obeyed the calling, he found himself under the
Lord’s protection. The prophet under God’s
protection could go into a foreign country, challenge the foreign king, and
live to tell about it! When we hear God
calling and are obedient, God watches over us closely.
But then
the prophet slips up. The prophet is
confronted by a man who is willing to lie to him to get him to come over for
dinner, essentially. The lying man tells
the prophet that an angel told him to get the man. The prophet wavers in his obedience and has a
lapse in judgment. He listens to the lie
without questioning why God would change his mind. Ultimately he loses his life because of that
lapse in judgment. While the prophet was
obedient to the calling, he had God’s protection. But when the prophet stopped being obedient,
the prophet went from God’s protection to God’s judgment in a hurry.
There is
a serious point to this story. When we
hear God speak to us, we need to listen.
We need to listen and stand firm to what God tells us. It’s really that simple. When God calls us into action, it is up to us
to be obedient and trust in Him.
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