The Burden of the Call

The season as of late has been one of growth, discovery, and trial. It's not as though I've faced some insurmountable mountain or am stuck in this place of despair - quite the contrary! God has been doing amazing things, things that have required me to become less of who I am by nature and more of what He wants my nature to be. Amidst all the other demands of life (work, school, marriage, family, ministry), maintaining my own personal/spiritual sanity with God has been an interesting trek. As I have inquired with God at times as to why I have felt so disturbed and unsettled in my spirit, I keep getting this direct, yet ambiguous (to my simple mind) in the same breath, leading that what I am experiencing is simply the burden of the call. What?

The best way I can explain it is that the call of God comes with a heavy weight. The mantle He places on us for any call or mandate in the Kingdom is more than we can bear - which is why He doesn't ask us to bear it alone! Still, there is a responsibility on those who carry within themselves the call of God to bear some of that weight that comes with it. When you know God is up to something and He is beginning to shift your heart and vision to see things in different ways and to even see things you've never seen before, it causes this sense of burden to come upon you - a burden to activate something new and birth it into tangible existence. Here is where I have found myself for some time now, thanks to this understanding God brought to my circumstances: carrying vision and the burden of the call, needing to birth it to fruition. But how?

The only way to really let God's vision birth in your life is to be after His heart. This reference in Scripture (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22) refers to David, a Biblical leader who has much to offer us about how we should lead our lives and those around us with such a mantle of influence in the Kingdom, but that's for another time. I've read the Biblical account of his appointment as the future king of Israel many times, and I always took this specific reference to him as a man after God's heart to mean that God simply overlooked all his shortcomings and just had it purposed for him to be the king Israel needed (which is not untrue). However, a conversation with perhaps greatest friend in life (aside from my wife) recently yielded a starkly different perspective on just exactly what David was being labeled.

David was labeled a man after God's heart - one who had the heart of God within that overwhelmed the heart of the man David that was often imperfect and driving him to do very human things. We've all been there - none of us are perfect, all sin and come short of God's glory (Romans 3:23). It is with this grace that God surpassed his failures and saw him as king, right? I would say not entirely. I think there is a completely different meaning to the word "after" there. Consider it like this: to be after something can also mean to be in pursuit of it. A young guy after the girl of his dreams is attempting to woo her and capture her attention. A Godly mother getting after her children for behavioral issues is desiring for them to become men and women of upright character and values in life. In any instance there is a pursuit involved - a pursuit of someone or something that is not yet attained. It is this facet of David that intrigued God so much to elevate him to the position of leading the entire kingdom as KING! It wasn't that David was perfect (because we see time and again that he clearly was not) - God loved the fact that David loved the heart of God, despite the fleshly nature that often ensnared him.

The intimate moment with my brother instantaneously changed my perspective on all that I had encountered in the past year. There I sat frustrated that the things I knew to be coming were not yet manifested, and I wondered whether I was even on the right wavelength with God over the whole deal. Had I taken a wrong turn? Had I handled something badly that I had yet to make amends for, thus hindering my comprehension and clouding the vision I thought I was supposed to see? Had I created in myself this destination to which I thought I was headed? Well, perhaps those things were true - God worked out many things in the recent seasons of life. The true lesson to be taken was that there was absolutely nothing I could do to bring about the manifestation of destiny any sooner than GOD intended it. I simply had to remain after His heart - in ways that I had not pursued Him in a long time! The revelation seems too simple, especially to those whose lives have been under His direct control for a long time, but it was inexplicably true to where I was at in that moment.

How do we achieve the things we see just outside our spiritual grasp? Pursue Him with all we have. It's the only way to get where we're supposed to be - all other paths only delay the inevitable, for the Word of God released over our lives WILL accomplish what He set it forth to do (Isaiah 55:11)!