What’s it mean to be available to God? It’s a question I’ve pondered over the course of several years and really am just beginning to grasp an understanding of it. Over the course of January, it’s something we’re going to explore in more detail as we launch a “Year of Listening Up” here at 1Glories.
This first post serves as an introduction and was meant to go live this past Monday, but I just couldn’t get it drafted in time. The posts that follow over the remaining Mondays in January will dig deeper into what it means to be “available” to God and will be an aid in our personal refining of life, on purpose.
Make Yourself Available… Stop Looking for “Your Calling”
A lot of people search for years, or a lifetime even, to learn what “their calling” is and I have been among those people. I spent a long while looking for purpose and direction from God. I pleaded and begged to know what I was supposed to do. I thought I was available to him. I wanted to dream, but I didn’t know what my dream should be. That’s when God smacked me upside the head and said “Look dummy… I’ve allowed you to achieve dreams. How about you think about MY dreams for a bit?”
That’s when I came to understand that a “calling” is something you find when you make yourself truly available and open to what God has called you to be and do. Not some pie in the sky thing to be achieved. No some notion of worldly greatness. It’s about glorifying God.
How Being Available Turned an a Carpenter into Santa Claus
We’re all very familiar with the story, a Christmas Carol. In that tale, the cold and embittered Ebeneezer Scrooge has his stony heart turned to flesh at witnessing the plight of the poor. The transformation is so drastic, one might be cynical about it. However, my local community was blessed to have a gentleman of a softened heart who witnessed a similar plight and sought to bring joy to those less fortunate.
Roland “Rolly” Muhn’s first job as a carpenter came about after dropping out of seventh grade. While he was building a house for a widow, he met a boy named Mack, who was from the St. Vincent Villa Orphans Home. The widow had little money, but she cared for the boy, who cried Christmas because he didn’t receive any new presents. The sight broke Rollie’s heart – and he made himself available for many years thereafter.
He promised to provide toys for orphans and decided to follow through beginning in 1926. That year, he began delivering presents to the St. Vincent Villa Orphanage at Christmas time, as himself at first, and later as Santa Claus. A role he reprised for decades afterwards (he even made his own toys for a bit).
The orphanage threw a Christmas party annually, and “Santa” was sure to bring presents, apples, oranges, and candy. His wife, Ann, was often helping with the parties and suggested the children write letters to Santa each year. “Santa” even wrote them back. In some instances, it was the first time they had received mail.
Be Available to God’s Voice and Calling
Rolly provides a great example of being compelled by witnessing a sliver of the significant broken nature that exists in our world and then taking God provoked action to mend it. He touched countless lives, bringing hope, joy, expectation and, perhaps most importantly, a sense of worth to those persons.
Some of us don’t get hit so directly, myself included.
In 1995, having spent a lifetime pursuing my own vanity, I was introduced to Christ. But I wasn’t available to him. I accepted him, but can honestly say I defiantly did not “give my life” over to him. I foolishly believed for years that God and I had an “understanding” that I was still going to do my thing even while being a Christian.
That same year, I experienced a genuine vision from God. I detailed that vision briefly in this post, so I will refrain from elaborating further in this one out of consideration for space. This vision, though, was nothing like I had ever experienced and I can say to you with certainty that it was no mere dream sequence. This was the real deal. And it scared me.
A decade later, I continued to seek meaning to that vision. I launched a blog in tandem with a devotional study in a vain attempt to interpret the vision. I ultimately did come to interpret and understand what God was telling me. Still, I did not take the message as undeniable truth and fact. I remained unavailable to God.
Most people will get frustrated when their messages are deliberately disregarded (am I right, fellow parents?). When that happens, our general course of action is to withhold as a quasi-embargo of sorts. The hope here is that it will prompt the person to relent.
That’s not what God did for me. He did the exact opposite.
Instead of withholding the blessings off achieving my worldly dreams, God blessed me abundantly. He allowed me to achieve all I had most longed to achieve. And then he broke me.
That’s when I realized I was not dreaming or living a life that’s in sync with the God’s dreams and the life he sought for me. That realization is what it meant – for me – to be fully available to God.
This post is part of the “A Year of Listening Up” project here at 1Glories. The project is based upon the life lessons and Listen Up, Kids (LUK) wisdom shared in the book, Listen Up, Kids, which is available for purchase in in paperback and Kindle formats at Amazon.com.