My Calling as a Mother

A recent devotional from The Institute for Creation Research had a profound impact.

"Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love" (Ephesians 4:1-2)

This verse can apply to my calling as a mother, writer, wife, singer, Bible teacher, even friend. As I apply this verse to my life habit and patterns in each of those callings, I blush and kneel.

And then, from Elisabeth Elliot in Lamp for My Feet, another confirmation about how we are called to live:

No Other Choice

No Christian ever gets beyond the power of temptation as long as he lives in "this mortal coil." Jesus was not beyond it--who are we that we should become more spiritual than Jesus? If we say that we have been delivered forever from sin, we are deceiving ourselves. We are never in a more vulnerable spot than when someone sins against us. All the "old Adam" in us rises up to retaliate. Perhaps we control the urge to punch the person or even to retort with the withering words that spring to mind. But then we wake up in the night and think about all the ways we could put this individual in his place--polite ways, we tell ourselves, Christian ways, but put him in his place we certainly will. The still small voice asks: Is that Christlike?

"The love of Christ leaves us no choice....His purpose in dying for all was that men, while still in life, should cease to live for themselves" (2 Cor 5:14,15 NEB).

No other choice but love. Cease to live for yourself. Live for Christ. Don't bother singing, "Oh, how I love Jesus" as long as you are plotting retaliation. You don't really have that choice, not if you're a Christian.

Lord, help me make my calling sure; to live only for You.