God Wants More
God wants more for us.
He wants more for me and more for you.
If we look to the Bible, we always see God calling people to more and greater. Think about Jesus’ calling of Peter, Andrew, James, and John. He called them away from their 9-to-5, their vocation, and the identities they had crafted and accepted. It’s not that they were doing anything wrong. By all accounts, they were productive, diligent people. And yet, Jesus put to death the life they knew.
He called them to more.
More impact.
More influence.
More conflict.
More sacrifice.
More uncertainty.
More risk.
More blessing.
More vision.
When Jesus said, “Follow me,” they could have never guessed how much more they were being called to.
Think about Matthew. He had resigned himself to such a pitiful calling for his life. He woke up every morning and set about gouging his tribesman on behalf of an occupying government. And he had grown OK with this. This was his reality. Can you imagine the shame and guilt he must have felt? Jesus reached into Matthew’s world and called him to more.
Paul, too. Paul probably thought he was in the center of God’s will for his life. Paul had no doubt convinced himself he was doing better than those around him at pursuing God. But Jesus called Paul to so much more than Paul could have ever imagined. Paul was to be God’s chosen instrument to carry the Gospel to the Gentiles. That’s about as much MORE as you can get.
Here’s a truth: When God calls us to more, it’s always related to His Kingdom, and it’s always a call to join Him.
In John 14:12, Jesus promises that when we come to Him in faith, the pump is primed for our lives to be full of more. Here’s a challenge for all of us to embrace this promise and engage with God in such a way that we expect to see Him call us to more.
God wants more for you. And He wants more from you. You see, it’s in God’s nature. God doesn’t value complacency. God is the God of both eternal patience and immediate urgency. God’s timeline is long, but He knows ours are short. And He loves us so much that He won’t leave us to sit in our uselessness. He prompts. He nudges. He gets our attention. And He calls us to more.
Teresa of Ávila once wrote:
“God has no desire for lukewarm souls. He desires that we walk the path of holiness with fervor, not stopping at any one point, for to do so would be to remain stagnant. There is always a higher place, a deeper understanding, a greater love that He calls us toward. It is in the nature of God to draw us ever closer to Himself, and He cannot be content with mediocrity when His desire for us is nothing less than complete union with Him.”
We must ask ourselves whether we are in tune with God’s great desire to do more in and through us. Do we long for expanding horizons and opportunities? Do we scramble to join Him in the work of stretching and shaping us? Or do we find ourselves satisfied with the status quo? Are we lulled to sleep by our comfort, all the while living in the shadow of an ever-draining hourglass? Because that’s the heart of the issue: our season of usefulness for the Kingdom is fleeting. It’s gotten smaller even as you read this. We only get this one shot at advancing the borders of God’s Kingdom before our time as ambassadors is over.
God compels and propels the forward movement of our lives in concert with the forward progress of His will. When we embrace His idea of more for us, we join in with Him and His work.
I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.
This article originally appeared in Volume 34 of my free newsletter, Good For You.
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