Assessing Our Vocation
He himself granted that some are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”
–Ephesians 4:11-13
In previous posts I suggested B.R.E.A.T.H. as a trauma-informed discipleship and church cultivation framework. The next movement in the discipleship journey is assessment.
Assessing: assessing one’s own gifts, skills, and vocation in the world, through discerning the inner voice of the Holy Spirit in community with others.
As a beloved child of God, you have a unique calling or vocation in the world. I like to think of this as a God-dream.
The word God spoke over Jeremiah is true of you as well. When God formed you in the womb he knew you (Jeremiah 1:5). Jesus reminds us that every hair on our heads is numbered and that we are of infinite value to God (Luke 12:7). God knows intimately every aspect of your beauty, goodness, and truth. God also knows your weaknesses, the fissures, and the fragmentation, he sees your heart (1 Samuel 16:7).
You were formed in the imagination of God before you were made flesh. Just as God dreamed up human beings, then made them like mudpies from the newly watered soils of the earth (Genesis 2), so God designed you.
God not only knows who you are, God knows who you are becoming. God sees who you will be. This vision God has for your life is the God-dream. The formation involved with becoming that person is discipleship.
Another way to think about this is through “being conformed to the image of Christ” (Romans 8:29). Every human being is on a journey of becoming. Christoformity is the journey of growing up, “to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph 4:13). In Ephesians, this is actually a communal image, we do this together as a community of disciples. Yet each one of us is like a single cell, making up the “body of Christ” in the world.
Our God-dream involves who we are called to become in the kingdom. It involves our gifts and graces. It involves our unique personality. It involves the things that make us tick and break our hearts.
It also involves the “wicked problems” of the world we feel compelled to give our lives to solve. Every person has a wicked problem, an issue that is complex and resistant to resolution because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. This is where our own experience and passions are brought to bear on some fragmentation in the world that breaks our hearts. It often flows from our own core wounds.
This is where we must reclaim the world’s skewed infatuation with authenticity. Yes, in the kingdom authenticity is important. But it’s not about the brands we wear or the kind of vehicle we drive. It’s not about the products we consume. It’s not about material wealth. It’s not about our social status or how many followers we have. It’s also not about how we choose to express our sexuality. Our sexual orientation is at best a secondary aspect of our identity.
Every person is indeed an authentic, non-repeatable, unique creation. We are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). And every one of us is a unique expression of the divine. There is one and only one you. You are an authentic expression of the creativity of God. Your personhood, your uniqueness, flows from that core identity.
Again, while the world celebrates the “authentic” heroes of culture who “keep it real” (primarily actors, athletes, musicians, politicians, and other highly visible public figures) following Jesus involves a different kind of authenticity. It can be captured by a phrase from Dallas Willard, “How would Jesus live my life if he were I.”
An authentic Christian is one in whom Jesus lives and breathes. It’s not about impersonation, trying to impersonate Jesus. It’s about personification, or Jesus’s personhood manifesting in us. Person-ification, involves Holy Spirit embodiment, as we learn to think, feel, act, live, and love like Jesus. As we invite Jesus to live through us. This involves living interactively with his resurrected presence: through him directly, through his word, and through other people.
For us authenticity is not just about living pristine lives perfectly filtered for Instagram worthiness. Our authentic self is also our struggles, our pain, our failures, our mistakes. In fact, in Christ there is a unique paradox, our weakness is our superpower, “my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in your weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
As a unique expression of a disciple of Jesus, you also come equipped with spiritual giftings.
The letter to the Ephesians lists five distinct intelligences or personality types that Christ bestows upon the church: Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds, and Teachers called the APEST typology. Using the language of “given grace” according to the measure of “Christ’s gift” these giftings are to “build up” the “body of Christ” (Ephesians 4: 1-13).
In this phase of our discipleship journey, we need to have some initial clarity around what our God-dream is, who we are in Christ, and what are our primary giftings in the APEST.
Jesus says, “For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish’” (Luke 14:28-30).
As disciples, we need to take an assessment of our lives. What assets and strengths do we bring to the body? What liabilities do we have? Can we allow Jesus to transform even our weaknesses into instruments of healing for others?