Calling vs. Clutter: Part 2

I’ve written previously about Two Talent Living and how the name of this blog came to be. I also wrote about calling and clutter. I’d like to share a few stories that might help others think about these issues in their own lives.

A few years ago I attended a Christian writers’ conference and had the opportunity to meet one-on-one with an editor from the Saturday Evening Post. She looked through my clippings and asked me what my plans were for my writing. I told her I didn’t know – that was partly why I was at the conference. I was doing lots of writing for a corporate client, but I was sensing that perhaps God had other things for me to do. I also explained the various responsibilities I had for my part-time employer that weren’t related to writing. The editor said to me, “Sallie, you certainly have the gift and abilities. You need to write and let other people do the other stuff.” In short, I needed to take care of the talents God had entrusted to me and let other people handle the other things.

It is easy for me to minimize the gifts I have been given. Because writing comes fairly easily to me or I enjoy teaching, I forget that this isn’t the case for everyone else! In fact, more people fear public speaking than death! That's one thing I just don't understand, but that's because God has created me to enjoy speaking and teaching. I have to pay attention to the special ways God has uniquely made me and make the most of them. I think it is easy for Christians to minimize the unique spiritual gifts that God has given to them because they often seem so natural we assume everyone can do what we do. But that isn’t the case. God puts the body of Christ together in such a way that each part is necessary and special in its own way. When one of us doesn’t do what we are created to do, the whole body misses out.

This was also clear to me one time when I went out to lunch with a missionary friend who was home from Africa. Ruth is a nurse and works in some remote areas where she must learn new languages and deal with all kinds of physical hardships. At the time, I was doing campus ministry at Michigan State University. I said to Ruth that I didn't know how she could do what she did. She looked at me and said that she couldn't imagine working with college students! To her, it was easier to go to Africa than work with American college students! I still can't completely wrap my mind around that one even all these years later. But God had a unique calling for Ruth and a calling for me. We both enjoyed using our gifts as we served the Lord in the ways He had made us.

A few weeks after I taught this concept in a class, a woman came up to me at our weekly ladies’ Bible study. She was sharing with a few of us that someone in the church had asked her to take on a certain responsibility that she did not believe she was gifted to do. She declined and said, “Sallie said I didn’t have to.” We laughed about it at the time, but I was pleased to see that this woman was thinking seriously about her unique calling and gifts and was saying no to the other things so she could freely and completely say yes to the things God had truly called her to do.

Can you imagine the impact the church could have on our culture if people stopped doing all the extra stuff and just focused on the unique things God has for them?

Never let mistakes or wrong directions, of which every man falls into many, discourage you. There is precious instruction to be got by finding where we were wrong.
Thomas Carlyle