by needleeye

Created on: January 06, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

If you have really heard the "Call" of Christ, His love and His holiness sinking into your awareness through the murky night of the soul, then somehow your life has become different. The call of Jesus in your life, if allowed to have its way, cannot help but whisk you into a new reality, one that is completely different from what life would be like had He never sent you the Call or had you not hearkened to it.

Don't think for a moment that you can "meet" God, and just walk away as if nothing has happened. Folks often see the salvation of God as simply a means to escape punishment for wrong-doing. And while it IS true that we are released from condemnation forever once we have placed our faith in Him, ("There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death" [Romans 8:1 NIV]), Jesus' invitation to you is so much more than a mere escape hatch from hell.

Neither is the Call simply a matter of getting your reservations turned in for your after-life. Although God Himself has indeed promised us a "forever after" life with Him ("For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with Him" [1 Thessalonians 5:9-10 NIV]); even so, Heaven is not just a Hilton Hotel for all eternity.

The Call of Jesus Christ in your life is an appeal for you to leave what you once knew, to cease to be what you once were, and to become something completely new recreated with a new position, a new passion, and a new power. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, Who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation" (2 Corinthians 5:17-18 NIV).

When you turn in faith to Jesus, your new position is that of "child of God", citizen of His heavenly kingdom, servant to the Lord, and ambassador for the King of kings. "Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the Chief Cornerstone" (Ephesians 2:19-20 NIV).

Your new passion is a hunger for more of God's glory to be revealed through your life and in the world and a forgetting of the spiritually trivial priorities and goals you once kept for yourself. "Whatever

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