Tag: Gifts and calling

Four Compelling Questions for Christians

Our nation and the world are facing challenges that could be devastating for our way of life and even our lives – war, financial crashes, and natural disasters.  When you interact with friends, family, and co-workers, here are four questions that may trigger a deeper conversation.  Follow-up questions are in italics.

  1. TOUCHING BASE – How are you doing?  What is happening in your life?
  2. HAND OF THE LORD – Have you ever seen the hand of the Lord in your life or sensed His presence?  When and in what was it like?  Do you believe we can learn how to be led by the Holy Spirit?
  • YOUR GIFTS AND CALLING – Do you know what your gifts are and what the Lord is calling you to do and become in this life? 
  • HOLDING YOU BACK – What is holding you back from fulfilling this calling in your life?  Is it
  • burdens you are carrying (that you haven’t given over to the Lord)?
  • sin (unconfessed sin)? 
  • not being in touch with the Lord / not spending time with the Lord each day in His Word and in prayer?

Finally, it would be good to ask what you can pray for your friend, and then go ahead and hold him/her up to the Lord in prayer.   You don’t want your friend to experience The Greatest Danger.

THE GREATEST DANGER

The greatest danger facing all of us is not that we shall make an absolute failure of life, nor that we shall fall into outright viciousness, nor that we shall be terribly unhappy, nor that we shall feel that life has no meaning at all – not these things.

The danger is that we may:

– fail to perceive life’s greatest meaning,

– fall short of its highest good,

– miss its deepest and most abiding happiness,

– be unable to tender the most needed service,

– be unconscious of life ablaze with the light of the Presence of God,

– and be content to have it so.

That is the danger – that some day we may wake up and find that always we have been busy with husks and trappings of life and have really missed life itself.

For life without God, to one who has known the richness and joy of life with Him, is unthinkable, impossible.  That is what one prays one’s friends may be spared – satisfaction with a life that falls short of the best, that has in it no tingle or thrill that comes from a friendship with the Father.     Phillip Brooks (1835-1893)