Before being called to something, we are called to Someone. Before we are called to do, we are called to be. Our primary calling¹ is to be in a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us that God has called us into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ.² God created us and knows our strengths, weaknesses, dreams, and fears. In spite of our imperfections, God loves us perfectly and completely. He wants us close to him. He calls us to belong to him.

Garrison Keillor recalled painful childhood memories of being chosen last for baseball teams. He dreamed of just one time being picked first--of hearing the team captain say, “’Him, I want him!’ … But I’ve never been chosen with much enthusiasm.”

In contrast, the gospel message is that God chooses each of us with great enthusiasm. None of us is a last pick, or chosen grudgingly. To each of us God says, “You! I want you!” God has created us to be his and to have a significant place in this world.

Our primary calling is not tied to our employment. We don’t lose our calling if we lose a job. We can live our calling even if we are unemployed or in work that doesn’t fit us well. God values us for who we are, not for what we can produce or achieve within work. God’s call to us is an eternal one that encompasses and transcends our temporal activities.

When one of us responds to God’s call to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, he or she enters into a new relationship with God³ and a brand new life.⁴ Jesus then calls us to become his disciples, or students, so that we can learn from him how to grow in the knowledge and power so that we can learn from him how to grow in the knowledge and power of our new life.⁵ In the New Testament, calling represents the life of faith itself. We are exhorted to “walk worthy”⁶ of the calling we have received. Dallas Willard describes the crucial idea of discipleship as “learning from Jesus to live my life as he would live my life if he were I.”⁷

As disciples, we seek to live as God’s people wherever we are and in whatever we do. God thus works through our individual lives to do the work of his kingdom. This was beautifully illustrated at a conference on spiritual renewal when a group of participants shared how they had seen God’s Spirit at work in their lives in the preceding week.

One woman described how she believed God was using a column she writes in her company’s newsletter to bring healing to the dissension-torn organization. Two men brought God’s kingdom into a restaurant by praying with their waitress about her fear of developing a debilitating physical condition. A college student taking a class in Eastern religions found that this teacher and classmates were curious about the Christian spiritual disciplines he practiced and were asking him many questions about his faith.

As each person spoke, we were given snapshots of how God was active in the world through the day-to-day lives of his people. God has chosen to do his work on earth through us. He knows who we can become as we follow Jesus. Our primary calling is to travel through life with God, living each day as called people. We live our calling as we walk with God.