“But the Lord said to Ananias, ‘Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name’” (Acts 9:15-16).
Sometimes we can place the idea of calling too much on the we do versus the One we are called to serve. Paul said that he was “called to be an apostle.” This has made some feel that if we each do not have a “special call” then we are second class citizens.
Paul saw his calling like any other believer’s call to salvation and obedience. We cannot negate the fact that God did call Paul in a dramatic encounter with the Lord that had broad significance to the rest of the Body of Christ. And, there are assignments that are going to impact the Body of Christ more than others. However, this is not the case for every believer and we should not feel slighted should we not have the same level of call.
Every believer shares the same basic calling with Paul, “as a bondservant of Jesus Christ, among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ,” as he says in (Romans 1:6). Paul was saying to the Roman Christians their call was the same as his. They were not all apostles, but they were all “called of Jesus Christ.”
For most of us, God will work out His calling upon our lives in many different and varied ways. Like Paul and the rest of the New Testament Christians, we are all called with the same glorious calling and thus stand as equals before God.
