Daily Encounter: A Week-day Devotional by a staff of ACTS International.

Thursday, September 17, 2020

"I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your Law is within my heart."¹

How do you know what God's will is for you? Or how will you know if you are called of God?

Brent Porterfield, quoting from Frederick Buechner's book, Wishful Thinking, provides an answer well worth pondering. Buechner "says that a good rule for finding one's vocation is this: Our special mission in our life is usually one of the following:

   A. That which we'd love most to do and
   B. It is work that the world most needs to have done.

"Buechner says that if we really get a kick out of our work, we have probably met requirement A, but if that work is writing TV deodorant commercials, chances are we haven't met requirement B. If our work is being a doctor in a leper colony, we probably have met requirement B, but if most of the time we are bored and depressed by doctoring, chances are we have not only bypassed A, we probably aren't helping our patients much either.

"Buechner concludes: 'The place God calls us to, is the place where our deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.'"²

Oswald Chambers described God's call this way: "The call of God is like the call of the sea to the sailor. Only he who has the nature of the sea within can hear the call."

Like a born-sailor who never rests until he answers the call of the sea and launches out into the deep, when God's Word is written in our heart, neither will we find rest until we do what we know in our heart what it is that God wants us to do. And when we answer that call, we too, like King David, will delight in God's ways and doing His workâ€"no matter how humble or noble that may be.

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, thank You that You have a plan and purpose for every Christian, and that includes me. Like David of old, please give me a love for Your Word and Your ways so that I, too, will know and delight in doing Your will and answering Your call on my life. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus's name, amen."

1. Psalm 40:8 (NASB).
2. Brent Porterfield, http://www.esermons.com/.

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