Your Development and Your Calling

What in your life do you feel God wants done that only God can do? Dr. Tony Evans says the Lord's purpose for your life could take you out of your comfort zone, but there's hope. When you hit your calling, God will be your sufficiency in it.

Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, this is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. Discovering God's destiny for your life will bring you more satisfaction than you can imagine, but it'll also cost you something. Today, Dr. Evans talks about the price we ought to be eager to pay in order to find and fulfill our calling.

Let's join him. You see, God wants to lead you to your calling, to your divine purpose for being, but in leading it to you, He has to also prepare you for it. There is a developmental process that must occur so that when you hit your calling, you are ready for it, and it is ready for you. We find Moses pastoring, verse 1, the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law. Now that ought to raise you a question, raise the question in your mind, and that is, what is Moses doing pastoring a flock of sheep?

That's a very important question. I know many of you know the biblical history. Hold your finger here in Exodus 3, go to Acts chapter 7.

Stephen is preaching his last sermon. He recounts Moses' story, verse 20, how he was born, a lovely child in the sight of God. He was nurtured three months in his father's home, but after he was exposed, Pharaoh's daughter, verse 21, took him away, nurtured him as her own son, and Moses was educated in all the learning of Egypt, and he was a man of power and words and deeds. Verse 23, but when he was approaching the age of 40, now you figure a man ought to know what his calling is by 40, it entered his mind to visit his brothers, the sons of Israel, and when he saw one of them being treated unjustly, he defended him, took vengeance for the oppressed by striking down the Egyptians, and he supposed, underline that word in your mind, he supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him, but they did not understand. He thought everybody knew he was the man. He thought everybody understood the reason God put him in this position was because God was situating him in order to become their leader. It says, but they didn't understand.

You see, until God is ready to reveal your calling, he's not ready for you to have it. What Moses did was he had a calling, but he decided to take it in the flesh rather than wait on it in the spirit, and so he resorted to a human means to do what only God could do. The next day he comes out and he sees two Jewish brothers fighting, and he says to them, you shouldn't fight one another, your brothers, and one of them turns on and say, how you gonna tell us? We thought you killed the Egyptians yesterday.

Oops. That means the word is out, it's gone public, and now, to make a long story short, Moses has to flee for his life. He flees for his life into the wilderness, winds up with Edmidion, meets Jethro, and he becomes a herder for 40 more years. I don't know whether you, but it upsets me sometime that God is not in a hurry. It's 40 years.

At the prime of life, he's 40. He makes a mistake that costs him 40 more years in the wilderness. With sheep, you talk about demotion, okay? That's a demotion. Let me tell you what taking care of sheep will do if you're used to being the king's son.

It will humble you. Now Moses was pastoring the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness, and came the Horeb, the mountain of God, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of the bush, and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So here we are. Moses is going to get his call.

Better yet, let's call it a recall. God had told him he was supposed to be the deliverer, but he had his own method, his own time, and a misunderstanding of the audience that he was going to be delivered. So God decides, since you didn't learn it in Egypt, maybe you'll learn it in the wilderness with sheep. If you are looking for your calling, here's what you want to look for. You want to look for God showing up in an extraordinary way, even if it's in an ordinary environment. He's taking care of sheep.

This is the ordinary job. Fires all the time are in the wilderness. He sees an ordinary fire except one thing. This fire keeps burning and the leaves stay green. So he knows something is odd here.

This is not normal. By the way, when God shows up, any old bush will do. In other words, he can take any normal situation and set it aflame.

He can take an ordinary situation and make it extraordinary. Moses said, I will turn aside and look, verse 4. When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, that's key. He gets more information that leads him towards calling. He says in verse 4, when he turns aside to look, God called him from the midst of the bush, Moses, Moses.

There are two things you need to know about that. Number one, God knew his name, and guess what? He knows yours. He could have only heard his name called by checking out the fire. Secondly, he called his name twice. Whenever God calls your name twice, you're in trouble. God knew. This is 80 years later, and God still knows his name. Moses said, here I am. Now please notice Moses has learned a very valuable lesson over these 40 years.

Don't jump out there doing stuff till you hear from me. Now he's saying, here I am, you talk, I'm listening. He now gets to hear his calling, because he was obedient to the voice of the Lord. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt. I am aware of their suffering.

Now, wait a minute. These people have been crying a long time. They were having trouble way back there 40 years ago.

Yeah, but they weren't crying to me. 40 years ago, they were not ready to be delivered, and you were not ready to be their deliverer. Therefore, verse 10, come and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.

Now, remember? That's what he thought he was gonna do 40 years ago. God didn't change the call, He changed the time. You may feel like God has always wanted you to do something, and you're doing the opposite from the something you thought He wanted you to do.

Unless He changes your want, you keep hold of that thing, because it may simply be a matter of time. He says, now I'm ready to send you to Egypt. But Moses says to God, now here's where it gets interesting.

In verse 11, okay, who am I? He's a broken man now. Brokenness is when God strips you of your self-sufficiency. It's where your confidence in you, independently of God I mean, your confidence in you, not that all the confidence that is rooted in God, but your confidence that is independent of God, is reduced. And there isn't a man I know, or a woman I know, who has been greatly used by God who hasn't been stripped first.

Every major person in the Bible whose life is unveiled before us had a stripping process. He says, who am I? That I should go to Pharaoh.

He used to be Pharaoh's son. That I should bring the son down of Israel. In other words, now this job is too big for him.

Remember what I gave the definition? Your calling will be always too big for you. You'll have to raise the question, how am I gonna do this? If you can do it and not raise that question, either you don't know you're calling or you haven't seen all of it, or you're just so self-sufficient you think you are God. He says, I can't do this.

This job is too big. Sheep have humbled him. But now God answers, verse 12. Oh, you can't do it, Moses? Okay, well let me help you. I will go with you so you don't have to do it.

I'll take care of it. You just be a conduit for me to do it. And this shall be the sign to you that I have sent when you have brought the people out of the land of Egypt, you shall worship me in this mountain.

You'll know it's real because I'm gonna lead you right back here. What in your life do you feel God once done that only God can do? If you don't have anything like that in your life, you will never see what God can do, because everything you have will always be too small.

Too small. It will never demand anything of God that is beyond your natural resources. Everybody says they have faith, but they only have faith in what they can do in case God messes up. If God messes up, I got to have my Plan B.

That's why He puts us in crisis, the strippers of Plan B. I don't know if you've ever been in a B-less plan, but a B-less plan is not a pretty place to be, because if that means that they don't work, everything crashes. Then Moses said to God, Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I shall say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you. You say, now, I'm gonna go tell these folks who ran me off 40 years ago, God told me to come here and set you folks free. God, do you know how they're gonna look at me? I'm gonna look like a purity fool. Hey, I mean, what you been doing for the last 40 years?

I've been taking care of sheep. Yeah, and God told you what? Uh-huh, right, yeah. What's his name? Now, the word name has to do with authority.

By what authority? Who do you think you are? And this is where you have the great rendition in the Bible. And God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, if they want to know who I am, if they want to know who I is, tell them I am.

That may not sound like a much of a name to you, that's a wop of a name. I as a personal pronoun, M as the present tense. He says, you tell them I am, personal pronoun, present tense, who I am, personal pronoun, present tense. I am defined only by me. I am the eternally existing, self-generating one.

I am. God says, I am that I am. I am defined by me, therefore I am all you need for this job. Dr. Evans will come back in a moment to explain what we have to lose in order to get hold of the future God has in store, so stay with us. First though, I'd like to tell you about the perfect book that goes along with today's message.

It's called Discover Your Destiny, Let God Use You Like He Made You. This book from Dr. Evans builds on what we've been learning, that God has an agenda not just for the world, but for each and every one of us, custom designed to give us the deep sense of satisfaction that comes from making a real difference. You'll learn how to find your one-of-a-kind special assignment from God and discover how the Lord will give you everything you need to carry it out. And through tomorrow, we're bundling this book along with the two volumes containing all 12 full-length audio lessons from Tony's current message series, Called for a Purpose. You can get the Destiny book and the Called for a Purpose audio series on CD or digital download as our gift when you make a donation to help us keep this program on the air. We depend completely on your support and this is one way we can show our appreciation for your faithfulness to the ministry of Dr. Evans. All the details are waiting for you online at tonyevans.org or call us at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members assist you with your resource request.

I'll have that information for you again after part two of today's message and this. The world says to man up, but they're often talking about things you can see, money, status. What does God say? To be a man and rise up in society, you can't leave God on the sidelines. To do so is the difference between good and great. See, greatness isn't achieved, it's demonstrated every day. A man leaves his legacy through a million middle moments done well.

It requires showing up, being present, standing up, speaking truth. In his powerful and long-awaited sequel to the instant bestseller Kingdom Man, Tony Evans Kingdom Men Rising challenges men to rise up for what they believe in. He inspires men to leave a legacy of both impact and influence. Get the much-anticipated sequel, Kingdom Men Rising, and get going. Seize what's yours, claim what's ours for the collective body of Christ.

Time is ticking. Kingdom Men, we must rise. Find out more at tonyevans.org. When you hit your calling, God will be your sufficiency in it, but He has to develop you and prepare you for that by letting you become devoid of self-sufficiency. And Moses would need a lot. Notice he says in verse 6, he says, I am the God of Abraham, so I'm the God of your past. Verse 7, I have shortly seen the afflictions of my people. I am aware of their suffering. I'm the God of your present.

Notice verse 8. So I've come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians to bring them out of the land, to good and spacious land, flowing with milk and honey. I'm the God of your future. I'm gonna take you to your future. I am past, present, and future.

I am in awe. So you go and get the people together and you get ready. Drop down to chapter 4 verse 10. Then Moses said to the Lord, verse 10, Please Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past. Verse 12, now you just go. I, even I, will be with your mouth, and I will teach you what to say. When you hit your calling, you will discover God's sufficiency, and your self-confidence, legitimate self-confidence, will be connected with God confidence. Everybody here who is seeking their calling, who has not discovered it yet, or who needs further clarification, needs to ask God one thing.

Show me a burning bush. Take an ordinary and create something extraordinary, and I will turn aside to look so that I can hear you call my name. God gives Moses a number of lessons, object lessons. We don't have time to go into them, but the one that's most noted is he's got a shepherd's crook stick with a hook on the top. He says, What's that in your hand, Moses?

He says, Well, there's nothing. It's just a staff. Throw it down!

Whoa! He throws it down, it becomes a what? Then God gonna say, Now pick it up, but then he gonna throw in one. By the tail. In other words, I want you to take the risk of trusting me, because trusting God sometimes is risky.

It's risky, because you don't know what he gonna do. Pick it up, Moses. He picks it up, and the Bible says it becomes a staff again. Okay, big deal. You're good at magic, God.

What's the point? You take that staff, and then you lead Israel out of Egypt. You fulfill your calling. Well, you know the story. Israel fussing, Pharaoh's coming, Red Sea in front of him.

Moses, stop doing all this talking. Hold out the staff. He holds out the staff. Everybody saw Cecil B. DeMills, right? Take a minute.

It was very well done. Hold out the staff. The waters part, because the staff is no longer known as the staff of Moses. It is now called the staff of God. When he threw it down, which is what God is going to ask everybody to do at some point in life, when you throw it down, and God tells you to pick it back up, it may look the same, and it may feel the same, but it's not gonna be the same, because God would have done something to that staff, and now the staff that only led sheep could now part waters, could now lead generations of people, could now hit a rock and water come out the rock. This ain't no ordinary stick. This is the stick that's been touched by God. He says, now I'm ready to send you to Egypt. But Moses says to God, in verse 11, okay, who am I?

You expecting me to do that? He's a broken man now. Brokenness is when God strips you of your self-sufficiency, and there isn't a man I know who has been greatly used by God who hasn't been stripped first.

Every major person in the Bible whose life is unveiled before us had a stripping process. In other words, now this job is too big for him. Remember what I gave the definition? Your calling will be always too big for you. You'll have to raise the question, how am I gonna do this? If you can do it and not raise that question, either you don't know you're calling or you haven't seen all of it, or you're just so self-sufficient you think you are God. He says, I can't do this.

This job is too big. Sheep have humbled him. But now God answers, verse 12. Oh, you can't do it, Moses? Okay, well, let me help you. I will go with you so you don't have to do it. I'll take care of you. You just be a conduit for me to do it. And this shall be the sign to you that I have sent when you have brought the people out of the land of Egypt, you shall worship me in this mountain.

You'll know it's real because I'm gonna lead you right back here. What in your life do you feel God once done that only God can do? If you don't have anything like that in your life, you will never see what God can do, because everything you have will always be too small.

It will never demand anything of God that is beyond your natural resources. Everybody says they have faith, but they generally have faith in what they can do in case God messes up. If God messes up, I gotta have my Plan B.

That's why He puts us in crisis to strip us of Plan B. I don't know if you've ever been in a B-less plan, but a B-less plan is not a pretty place to be, because if that means that they don't work, everything crashes. Then Moses said to God, Behold, I'm gonna go tell these folk who ran me off 40 years ago, God told me to come here and set you folk free. God, do you know how they gonna look at me? I'm gonna look like a purity fool. Hey, I mean, what you been doing for the last 40 years?

I've been taking care of shit. Yeah, and God told you what? Uh-huh, right, yeah, and God said to Moses, I am who I am, and he said, Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, if they want to know who I am, he says, you tell them, I am, personal pronoun present tense, who I am, personal pronoun present tense, I am defined only by me. God says, I am that I am.

I am defined by me, therefore I am all you need for this job. When you hit your calling, God will be your sufficiency in it, but He has to develop you and prepare you for that by letting you become devoid of self-sufficiency. Dr. Tony Evans, wrapping up a message he calls Your Development and Your Calling, part of his powerful series called For a Purpose. This two volume 12 lesson collection will help you find and fulfill God's unique plan for your life. As I mentioned earlier, when you make a contribution to the ministry, we'll be happy to send you this complete audio series on CD and digital download, along with Tony's life-changing book that goes hand in hand with the material we've been hearing today.

Discover your destiny, let God use you like He made you. This special thank you package deal ends tomorrow, so visit TonyEvans.org right away to request them and make a contribution in support of the ministry of Tony Evans and the alternative. That's TonyEvans.org or call our 24-hour resource request line at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members help with your request. That's 1-800-800-3222. Tomorrow can be a scary destination, dark, uncertain, and unknown, but next time Dr. Evans will talk about the promises you can depend on, even when the future seems unclear. I hope you'll join us. The alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative and is celebrating 40 years of faithfulness thanks to the generous contributions of listeners like you.