Mission: Keep It Simple

It’s only a dark secret to those who close their eyes.

I’ve had a few ask me how to discern their mission in accordance to what I teach here. It’s not that hard. Keep in mind that I’ve often said there is nothing wrong with using ordinary Aristotelian logic where the Spirit remains silent. That translates down to this: If you aren’t driven by conviction to take one path or another, feel free to use your own best logic to choose. This is why we cannot neglect the development of that lower form of reason. It has its place. It cannot provide executive decisions about what really matters in this world because it is not capable of grappling with revelation and morals, but it does just fine with abstracting and implementing what revelation requires. Reason was given by God to serve the Spirit, so sharpen your service by developing your reasoning capacity.

Everyone is called. Not a single human was born without a divine purpose. Those who sense that calling, that drawing of a higher power, must first commit themselves to their best understanding of the moral imperatives. That’s the gateway to approaching God. When you understand His moral character and His requirements for human life in general, you stand in the place to discover all the rest. Nothing has meaning until you embrace the moral imperatives inherent in the various Law Covenants in Scripture. Once you understand them in their own context, you are in a position to grasp what God requires of all humans in other contexts.

Whether you then perceive from God a specific calling is not the point. Some do; some do not. It’s not an insult if God offers you more freedom to choose. What you must understand is that the path you choose in terms of calling was never the real issue in the first place. Too often your context of life closes down most of the various broader human options, leaving you little choice in your vocation. Take what comes, but take it under the frame of reference provided by biblical moral guidance.

Pray for guidance. It may not come in a flash of clarity, but if you seek purity, you’ll have it. That purity will help you eliminate things you simply cannot do. Your convictions exist to close some doors and open others. Test things against your convictions. While some of your possible choices will always be wrong in every context — particularly those related to human sexuality — most everything else is a matter of what your conscience will bear. Be open to a divine guidance that will eventually break through our fallen state and clarify things that we did wrong early on. That’s what mercy and forgiveness is for, to cover our human weakness. Don’t presume and abuse it, but don’t neglect it as a part of your calculus.

What you do is far less important than what you desire, in the sense that holiness is defined as the desire to be holy. Holiness makes us separated from mundane concerns and devoted to God’s requirements. The earthly manifestation of that holy desire is a lot less important than the desire itself. Take the path before you; walk in the light you have. As your perception improves, don’t be distracted by false shame that you somehow got things wrong previously. It’s quite possible you were unable to shed that bit of death until you tasted it first. That won’t excuse the urge to taste things you already consider wrong, so there is a place for sincerity. However, your understanding will fluctuate and that is entirely normal. “Search your own heart” is a phrase referring to testing things against your convictions, so that you can’t excuse intentional sin. You also can’t let it tie you down when you repent. Dress your wounds, note the scars and avoid the mistakes the next time. Pain and sorrow are great teachers, strengthening our resolve. Religion is the body of experience you carry to give sense to your actions, filtered through your best understanding at any given time.

Learn to evaluate things in terms of moral imperatives. That’s the ultimate mission and calling for us all, regardless whether we are granted some strong sense of vocational calling. Live that moral imperative, and sometimes that means talking about it when others will listen. Speaking about it won’t mean anything until it owns you, tried and tested.