Our Divine Calling
Ephesians 4:1-4 TPT As a prisoner of the Lord, I plead with you to walk holy, in a way that is suitable to your high rank, given to you in your divine calling. With tender humility and quiet patience, always demonstrate gentleness and generous love toward one another, especially toward those who may try your patience. Be faithful to guard this sweet harmony of the Holy Spirit among you in the bonds of peace, being one body and one spirit, as you were all called into the same glorious hope of divine destiny.
Paul wrote the book of Ephesians from a prison cell in Rome in AD 60. My mind cannot take in the miraculous revelations and truths he shared from this horrid place. I heard someone say they had visited Paul’s prison cell while touring Rome. They said you couldn’t even fully stand upright in it. Imagine, to have to be stooped over to move around. He describes himself as a “prisoner of the Lord,” yet there are days I become downhearted because the last of my favorite cereal is gone. Ridiculous!
Paul describes our place in the Lord as having high rank within a divine calling. How privileged we are! Yet, do I recognize who I really am in the Lord? Do I recognize His great love for me and that all of His ways and all of His timings are perfect, therefore He makes my way perfect? I lose sight of that, sad to say. I think good times, plenty, safety, and a myriad of all that God has blessed me with, somehow causes me to become complacent to who I am and how I am to be. Paul goes on by saying “with tender humility and quiet patience, always demonstrate gentleness and generous love toward one another.” Wow! Oh how I have fallen short of all of that! My pride, my impatience, my roughness, and measured out love makes me blush with shame. Oh, I may not have openly been mean or impatient, but if you could only read my mind, as the song says, “What a tale my thoughts would tell.”
Do I guard the sweet harmony of the Holy Spirit among my family, friends and church family? To a point, yes, but not as I could be doing. Sometimes I have inwardly chuckled at discord, with an inward, “I told you so” attitude as if I were superior in some way, rather than encourage forgiveness and a shunning of backbiting and complaining. We are one body and we are one spirit, all called into the same glorious hope of divine destiny. As a girl we used to sing this sweet old chorus, “To be like Jesus, to be like Jesus; all I ask is to be like Him. All through life’s journey, from earth to glory. All I ask is to be like Him.” I don’t know about you, but I need to get real in singing this old song, to pray this old song and to apply the concept of this old song, “to be like Him.” I need to value everyone, not just when it fits my schedule and ways, but to love like He loves and to reach out like He reaches out. That is the glorious hope of my divine destiny and within this calling there will be a metamorphosis in me, a dying of the old man in a miracle change to the new, “to be like Him,” in my divine destiny.
What about you? Do you need a metamorphosis, a heart change to be conformed to His image? Are you guarding the sweet harmony of the Holy Spirit in your family, friends and church fellowship? Oh Lord, help us to recognize our divine destiny in You and yield ourselves a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to you which is our reasonable service.
