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If Bible scholars are correct in suggesting that the book of Acts was written as a pre-trial brief for the apostle Paul, it’s not a surprise that six chapters are devoted to the stories relating to his arrest, imprisonment, and legal difficulties. What consistently shines through is Paul’s sense of call. Where once he was a driven man – busy, manic, and restless – God changed Paul’s heart and Paul’s life into an exhibition of responding to a lifelong divine invitation. Every disciple must ask: What has God called me to do with my life?

Back to the Blueprints
I Have to Do This

June 20-21
Glenn McDonald
Acts 21-26

This message was preceded by personal sharing by Barry Sumner, who described his evolving call to ministry to the Hispanic community in Mexico and central Indiana.

If you have surrendered your heart to Jesus Christ, you can have absolute clarity about your destiny. You are on your way to heaven. But what is your purpose in the meantime? What work have you been called to do on the road to your destiny?

Barry has long been able to speak with assurance about his spiritual destiny. That hasn’t changed since he met Jesus. But his sense of calling continues to unfold. Barry’s specific purpose as a servant in God’s kingdom just keeps opening up, year by year, as revealed by the Holy Spirit. So far that has meant turning the retirement paradigm upside-down. I mean Barry is retired, for crying out loud. He ought to be home watching the U.S. Open right now and polishing his golf game. Instead he has been reassigned into a labor of love for which God has been preparing him for decades.

But then this is how God has always worked. If we trust him with the first steps of our spiritual journey, a path begins to open up that we could never have imagined. As we approach the end of our six-month study of the New Testament book of Acts, you might recall that Jesus laid out the path for the early Church in the very first chapter. He said to his disciples in Acts 1:8: “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Jesus essentially gave his first followers a blank passport and said, “Now go get this stamped on every continent, by every people group, in every generation.”

Then we watched it begin to happen, step-by-step. The original disciples stood up in Jerusalem and said, “Jesus is the one we’ve all been waiting for.” Later they took that news into the surrounding Judean countryside. Then they crossed racial and theological lines and began to raise up new disciples in Samaria. Ultimately they risked a series of monumental leaps that brought the message of Jesus to the entire Mediterranean world, chiefly through an amazing man who came to be known as the apostle Paul.

We’ve called this series Back to the Blueprints because exploring the book of Acts is like rolling out the original set of blueprints for what it means to follow Jesus. What have we learned? Jesus has given Christians of every generation a common purpose. It is called the Great Commission. We are to be disciples who make disciples – lifelong learners of everything he said and did and taught. We are to live together in authentic community. That takes infinitely more commitment than just attending local church gatherings from time to time. We are to share a life of common prayer. We should expect God to provide signs and wonders – continuing evidence of his presence and power.

We should also empower every disciple to discover his or her spiritual gifts and be released into specific forms of service that change the world. We are to learn how to hear God and to trust God to help us resolve difficult issues. But more than anything, we are to go. We have been sent into the world not in our own power, but with the indwelling power of God’s own Spirit. Therefore even when circumstances seem to be at their worst, God remains faithful. Remember that Jesus said, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.”

God’s faithfulness to Paul becomes brilliantly clear in chapters 21 through 26. These half dozen chapters provide details of the supreme difficulties that he faces when he travels back to Jerusalem. Paul used to play, so to speak, for the Jewish religious authorities. Now he is the star player for the Jews and Gentiles who have chosen Jesus. His enemies in Jerusalem – members of his old team, that is –decide to pounce on him while they have the chance. Therefore he is almost lynched by an angry mob. Roman soldiers, of all people, come to his rescue. For two years he is kept under arrest, a period of confinement that occasionally gives him the opportunity to witness for Christ and to tell his own story.

One of those occasions is reported in Acts chapter 26, where Paul stands before a local magistrate named King Agrippa. Paul goes all the way back to his early days to explain how he became such a tenaciously loyal servant of Jesus. Let’s pick up his words beginning in verse 4:

“The Jews all know the way I have lived ever since I was a child, from the beginning of my life in my own country, and also in Jerusalem. They have known me for a long time and can testify, if they are willing, that according to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee. And now it is because of my hope in what God has promised our fathers that I am on trial today. This is the promise our twelve tribes are hoping to see fulfilled as they earnestly serve God day and night. O king, it is because of this hope that the Jews are accusing me. Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?

“I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And that is just what I did in Jerusalem. On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the saints in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. In my obsession against them, I even went to foreign cities to persecute them.”

There’s no question about it: Paul is a religious fanatic – both before and after he met Jesus. This is a man who embodies the words I have to do this. Now there are at least three ways in which we ourselves might speak those words. First, I have to do this can express a responsibility. I have to clean the bathrooms in our house (at least from time to time). I have to let the cat out at 6:00 a.m., especially when he’s up on the dresser knocking things onto the floor. I have to pay my newly recomputed property taxes by July 9 – oh, boy.

I have to do this can also mean that we are driven. This seems to be the best way to understand Paul’s obsession with persecuting Christians. What does it mean to be driven? Driven people are fanatical about achieving goals – often without a clear understanding as to what exactly is motivating them. They tend to see life in terms of results; as battles that are won or lost; as an ongoing competition with other people. Tiger Woods’ father once said to him, “Son, you will never meet another person who wants to win more than you do.” Gordon MacDonald writes, “Winning provides the evidence the driven person desperately needs that he is right, valuable, and important.”

Driven people often make significant contributions to the world. They launch new organizations, meet or exceed the highest expectations, and seem to be able to draw from unheard-of reservoirs of personal energy and inspiration. They tend to be abnormally busy, and cherish the reputation of never-ending motion. It’s not inaccurate to say that driven people run our world, because we have created a system that is carried on their backs.

So what’s not to like about being a driver? Drivenness as a way of life is exceedingly costly. It compromises our health. It compromises the happiness we say can be ours only if we achieve it. And it compromises every important relationship – from our neighbors to our loved ones to God himself. In fact it’s safe to say that we cannot simultaneously love God and our absurd lists of things to do – those lists that make God functionally irrelevant because we’ve got everything under control.

Fifteen years ago, during the renovation of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, an old photograph was discovered underneath the World War II display case on the second floor. Someone had shoved it there. It was a picture of a man wearing a semi-pro baseball uniform with a Sinclair Oil emblem on it, representing one of the numerous minor league teams that were active in America during the 1940s.

Attached to the back of the picture was this note: You were never too tired to play catch. On your days off you helped build the Little League field. You always came to watch me play. You were a Hall of Fame Dad. I wish I could share this moment with you. Your son, Pete. No one knows the identity of the man in the picture. No one knows who Pete is, either. Ultimately the Cooperstown curator decided to shove the picture back under that display case and leave it as a kind of timeless and anonymous love note.

On this Father’s Day weekend, what’s so bad about being a driven person? Drivenness as a way of life makes it virtually impossible to be a Hall of Fame Dad. That’s because there’s always something else to do. There’s always another meeting to attend, and another hill to climb. And the irreplaceable people in our lives tend to get lost along our climbs to higher achievement.

Organized religion is an outstanding hiding place for driven people. That’s because you get heartfelt applause from so many people who are so glad that you are sacrificing so much. And you can do it all in the name of God. This is what Paul is referencing in these verses. Here we see Paul the outstanding student, and Paul the hard worker, and Paul the Pharisee who needs to win at all costs. And the cost is huge. Paul is literally murdering people as a strategy to serve God, and will later consider all his so-called achievements of this period of his life as less than zero.

What can you do if you’re trapped in drivenness? I am a driven person. This is where it would be great to provide a word of testimony – where I can say to you from the authority of personal experience, “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” Except…I am still lost. And I am still blind. In all honesty, I have never trusted God to reorder my life in this crucial area. In fact, I have tended to push God away. From time to time people ask, “How can we pray for you as our pastor?” Please pray that I surrender – that I learn how to lay down my lifelong addiction to striving, and doing, and peddling the bicycle just as fast as I can. And I will pray that God will give you the very same grace to surrender to him.

We can thank God that there’s a third meaning to the phrase I have to do this. Barry has already illustrated it for us. We will find ourselves living out the words I have to do this in a healthy way if we discover and respond to God’s call on our lives. Paul was a driven man who became a called man. He describes the moment that happened beginning in verse 12:

“On one of these journeys I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. About noon, O king, as I was on the road, I saw a bright light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions. We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’

“Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’”

Now make no mistake: Paul was just as fanatical working for Jesus as he was when he worked against Jesus. So what’s the difference? It’s all about the motivation. It’s all about the fire that moved him forward. Where’s the fire if you’re a driven person? It’s behind you. It pushes, and singes, and never lets you off the hook: “You’ve got to keep going, you cannot quit or you’ll be a failure.” Where’s the fire if you’re a called person? It’s out in front of you, in the person of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit beckons, and invites, and draws us into the life of God. On the road to Damascus Paul’s grim have-to of drivenness became the joyful have-to of not wanting to miss another moment serving Christ.

So let’s go back to where we started. What’s the difference between our spiritual destiny and our spiritual purpose? Jesus extends a call to every one of us. He says, “Follow me.” He then calls every one of us to participate in the Great Commission: to be disciples who raise up yet more disciples. In that sense all of us have exactly the same call, and we can anticipate precisely the same destiny: We are on our way to life in all its fullness with the Lord and with each other.

The Greek word for church, incidentally, is ecclesia. That’s where we get our modern word “ecclesiastical.” Ecclesia literally means “those who are called out.” Therefore a church represents a gathering of the people who have been called out of their old ways of living into the new way living for Jesus.

Significantly, there is another sense in which the Bible describes the notion of being called. We may all be headed for the same destiny, but along the road we are each given a unique assignment or call or purpose. How in the world do we discover what that special purpose might be? Frederick Buechner has suggested that you will discover your call where your deepest joy meets the world’s great need.

Barry Sumner has been called to minister to Hispanic men and women. How did that gradually become clear to him? God arranged for the circumstances of his living in Mexico. God opened the doors of conversations with other people. God gradually aligned his passions with his opportunities. Do you remember how Paul was sent out on the world’s first missionary journey? Back in Acts 13 he was regularly spending time with a small group of trusted spiritual friends. They prayed and fasted together. It was in the context of that spiritual listening that the Holy Spirit said, “Send Paul and Barnabas into the task that I have chosen for them.”

So what can you do to discern God’s special call on your life? Ask yourself if God has placed a burden on your heart. What concern or passion has God planted so deeply within you that it feels like a weight that you have to carry around? What kinds of hopes and dreams keep you up at night?

Maybe you have no idea. That’s OK. Begin a conversation with God as to what his special purpose for you might be. Talk to your friends and family members and trusted spiritual counselors. Pay attention to circumstances. Keep in mind that God is more than up to the task of weaving together the stories of all 6.3 billion people who currently live on this planet. Above all, don’t lose heart if it seems that your growing sense of call seems to represent something that could never actually be fulfilled in the real world.

Years ago I remember some of the first-year college students of our church coming back home for Thanksgiving. “What are you majoring in?” I asked. “Chemical engineering,” one of them said. “Oh, do you like chemistry?” I asked. “No, not really,” came the answer. “So you enjoy engineering, then?” “It’s OK, I guess.” “So why are you majoring in chemical engineering?” I’ll never forget the answer: “Because I can make about $60,000 the first year out of school.”

When you ask a student, “What would you really like to do?” you might hear an answer like this: “I’d love to write children’s books, but no one would ever pay me to do that.” Then maybe the church, the ecclesia, this gathering of the called-out ones, has to become the place where our true vocations can be realized in the presence of each other. Our deepest joy is not dependent on how much money we can make. This is the place where gifted and called people can be turned loose – to bless the Body of Christ and to go into the world to make a difference.

Kim Clement declares that you will be deeply happy on your journey to what God has called you to do, even if for now you feel stuck. Think about Paul. He was stuck in detention in Israel for two years, and then two years more in Rome. Those were years he could have been out preaching the gospel. Paul was joyful, however, because he trusted that God was in charge of the details of his life. You may feel trapped at home, or stuck in an awful job, or pinned down by debt. But God can be trusted.

And on this matter I do have a testimony. I may struggle with drivenness. But I know I am a called person. If you belong to Jesus, then God has placed a call on your life, too. And he will never let you go. I thought I was called to be a teacher. I knew I wasn’t called to be a pastor; otherwise Mary Sue might not have shown up for our wedding. But God in his faithfulness shifted the tectonic plates in our minds and hearts. Very gradually circumstances, opportunities, needs, and passions began to come together in a way that neither of us ever expected.

A couple of years ago we attended a conference with about a thousand other pastors and spouses. We were struck during that time how many of those church leaders were struggling to hang on to God and to each other – simply to hang on to their very calls to ministry – in the midst of difficult circumstances. During one of the general sessions there was a video that featured brief clips of a number of pastors. Each vignette ended with the same words: The pastor looked at the camera and said, I have to do this.

I turned and looked at my wife and said what I once assumed I would never be able to say: I have to do this. Mary Sue responded with one of the top ten most romantic things she has ever said to me: I know.

You may not know what your call is this evening, but you can know this: If you belong to Jesus, you have an incredible destiny. And you’re called to be his disciple. And he has placed a unique call on your life that you can come to know, by God’s grace – and on your journey with him, he will never let you down.