3. The Vocation of the Natural Life for God
The Call
1. The Voice of the Nature of God
And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us? Then I said, Here am I; send me. (Isaiah 6:8 rv)
When we speak of a call we nearly always leave out one essential feature, viz.: the nature of the one who calls. We speak of the call of the sea, the call of the mountains, the call of the great ice barriers. These calls are heard by a few only because the call is the expression of the nature from which the call comes, and can only be heard by those who are attuned to that nature.
The call of God is essentially expressive of the nature of God, it is His own voice. Paul says that “God commendeth His own love toward us” (rv). the love that is exactly expressive of His nature. Get that thought with regard to the call of God. Very few of us hear the call of God because we are not in the place to answer; the call does not communicate because we have not the nature of the One Who is calling. In the case of Isaiah, his soul was so attuned because of the tremendous crisis he had passed through, that the call of God was recorded to his amazed soul. God did not lay a strong compulsion on Isaiah; Isaiah was in the presence of God and he overheard, as it were, the soliloquy of God: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” and in conscious freedom he replied, “Here am I; send me.”
There is a good deal of instruction to be got by watching the faces of people in certain surroundings—by the sea shore, in an art gallery, during music; you can tell at once if they are listening to the call of the thing or simply reflecting themselves. Most of us have no ear for anything but ourselves, anything that is not “me” we cannot hear. We are dead to, and without interest in the finest music, we can yawn in a picture gallery, and be uninspired by a sunrise or a sunset. That is true not only of the soul’s denseness to natural beauties, or to music and art and literature, but true with regard to the awakening of the soul to the call of God. To be brought within the zone of God’s voice is to be profoundly altered.
The call of God is not the echo of my nature, but expressive of God’s nature. The call of God does not consider my affinities or personality. It is a call that I cannot hear as long as I consider my personality or temperament; but immediately I am brought into the condition Isaiah was in, I am in a relationship to God whereby I can hear His call.
There are strands of the call of God providentially at work that you know and no one else does. It is the threading of God’s voice for you on some particular line, and it is no use to consult anyone else about it, or to say that other people are dull because they do not hear it. “Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.” You feel amazed at the sense of God’s call, and in your eagerness you talk to someone else about it, and you find that they much prefer to talk about their breakfast. Then comes the danger that you are apt to become contemptuous. Keep that profound relationship between your soul and God.
2. The Vision of the New Life from God
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (John 3:3)
The power of vision which the new birth gives refers to perception by the personal spirit, and the characteristic of being born from above (rv mg) is that you begin to discern the rule of God. God’s rule was there all the time, but true to His nature; now you have received His nature, you can perceive His rule. It is a good thing to mark the times when you feel your personal spirit trembling on the verge of a new vision. It may be during a lecture or in prayer, you nearly see something, then it goes, don’t be distressed; it is the evidence of the new life from God. The life given by God is capable of immediately hearing the voice of God’s own nature. Unless the nature of God comes into you, said Jesus to Nicodemus, you cannot understand Him; but if His nature comes into you, of course you will hear Him (John 3:3-8). Intuition is the power to sense things without reasoning, and is a better guide than what is stated explicitly; but there is something infinitely more satisfactory—the entrance of the Holy Spirit into a man at new birth enabling him to see the Kingdom of God and to enter into it.
3. The Vocation of the Natural Life for God
But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the [Gentiles, rv]. (Galatians 1:15-16)
The call of God is the call according to the nature of God; where we go in obedience to that call depends entirely on the providential circumstances which God engineers. The call of God is not a call to any particular service, although my interpretation of the call may be; the call to service is the echo of my identification with God. My contact with the nature of God has made me realise what I can do for God. Service is the outcome of what is fitted to my nature; God’s call is fitted to His nature, and I never hear His call until I have received His nature. When I have received His nature, then His nature and mine work together; the Son of God reveals Himself in me, and I, the natural man, serve the Son of God in ordinary ways, out of sheer downright devotion to Him.
The call to service is the result of my obedience to the realised call of God. Profoundly speaking there is no call to service for God; it is my own actual “bit,” the overflow of superabounding devotion to God. God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him, He brings me into a relationship with Himself wherein I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love to Him. To serve God is the deliberate love gift of a nature that has heard the call of God. When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realise what they can do for God. Their natural fitting for service and the call of God is identified as one in them.
The vocation of the natural life for God is stated by Paul—“When it pleased God . . . to reveal His Son in me that I might preach Him [sacramentally express Him ] among the Gentiles.”