Knowing Our Burning Bush When We See It
Copyright 2004 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
One of the most compelling and seemingly mysterious aspects of the Christian life is the concept of "calling". Few serious believers have not longed to hear God tell them what they are uniquely created to do in His Kingdom. We read of the burning bush Moses encountered in the desert or the blinding light out of which the Lord spoke to an abruptly dismounted Saul and we long for something that clear and powerful to leave us in no doubt as to what we are meant to be.
Sometimes a child of God’s reaction to that longing can be problematic. If we have not learned our calling by the time we are a certain age we may be tempted to begin trying to make one up for ourselves. Perhaps we know that we have certain talents and gifts and, having assumed our purpose must be exclusively connected to them, come to believe that the very presence of such abilities constitutes a specific divine call.
For others the temptation might be to try to read certain impressions they sense they have had from God as a definitive proclamation from the throne about their earthly destiny. In this scenario even a small hint or sign can be put on a pedestal it does not deserve to be on. A Christian can elevate an ambiguous, perhaps even false, sense of God’s will for their lives into "The Call".
In either case we run the risk of letting our legitimate desire to enter into Christ’s deepest purposes for our lives become what is, in essence, a self-calling.
Recently someone I respect as a person who has truly come to know and live out God’s purposes for his life shared an illustration with me that was both simple and profound. He asked me if when someone calls me on the telephone, and we have a conversation, I know that they have called me. I answered by saying, with some impatience, something to the effect that "obviously, of course I know they called." A phone call from a friend is unambiguously just that, a phone call from a friend!
His point was straightforward. If we have no uncertainty about something as relatively unimportant as whether we have received a call from another human being to discuss today’s weather how much less will we have uncertainty when the God of the Universe communicates to us His specific will for our lives? When our Lord truly calls us we will know. It will be unmistakable.
In the meantime we are called to grow where we are planted and trust that, in doing so, God is preparing us to live out our eventual calling through the unique circumstances we find ourselves in today.
In realizing and accepting this truth we experience the serenity that comes from knowing that we can be in His perfect will even if we have yet to encounter our own burning bush. As we seek to commune with our Lord in spirit and in truth, living for Him each day in whatever we do, we can fully trust in that blessed encounter coming to pass.