How God Calls Us to Faith: Part 1

* As an affiliate, I may earn a small amount at no extra cost to you from qualifying purchases made from my website. Thank you for supporting my small business!

Looking for a calling

I wandered around, despairing that I would ever discover my career path. I checked every building on campus but still felt lost. Everywhere I looked, all I saw was foreign to me. I tried and tried, but still couldn’t find where I was supposed to be.

The day before I received a letter from the school. It went something like this, “Dear Miss Towers. This letter serves to notify you that your current  GPA is below the standards of our university. If you do not bring your GPA up to the required minimum by the end of next semester we will be forced to terminate your enrollment with our school.” They were going to kick me out if I didn’t bring my grades up. 

I certainly was having fun at college. I had lots of friends, drank too much, and enjoyed sleeping in. Clearly I wasn’t spending enough time on my classes. 

I’d always wanted to be a marine biologist. I wanted to study how marine animals communicated with each other.  And the school even arranged for me to have an internship with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 

But my grades were horrible. I was failing college. I knew the right major for me had to be somewhere, I just had to find it. As I wandered aimlessly in building after building I finally saw a poster – “what can you do with a degree in communication?” it read.

I was shocked. I could major in TALKING??? That was certainly something I could do well. People always told me I talked too much…maybe there was a purpose in it! 

It’s not always clear sailing

But my parents. I was so scared to talk to them. I’d ALWAYS wanted to be a marine biologist. How was I going to tell them that I was failing and changing my major? How could I tell them that I wasted all their money and all that time?

I did pray about it. I chose to believe that for reasons I couldn’t identify, this was what I was supposed to do. After prayer, I decided to go forth in faith. When I finally mustered the courage to tell them, my Dad said, “You want to do what? You want us to send you to a private college to learn how to talk?!”

Had I only known then what I know now. 

Beginning to see the real calling

I didn’t see it at the time, but God was calling me from one path to another. He then called me closer to Him to learn from HIm. And then he called me to go out and tell others about Him. When he called me to change paths and study communication, I had no idea that calling would bring me here, to share with you about the goodness of God when we choose faith over fear. 

God might be calling you from one area to another, as well. When He does, we need to obey in faith, not fear.

One way God calls us

God calls us away from what was before. God called Simon Peter, Andrew, James, & John from their lives of being fisherman. But they must have been pretty scared too. 

This was totally new for them. While a rabbi normally called followers, Jesus was totally different from other rabbis.

Rabbis in Jesus’ time

Rabbis of the time would learn from someone, then set up their own school citing the ideas they learned from others. They chose their students based on those would would best carry on their own unique teachings. Then the students would set up their schools, and the cycle repeated. 

But Jesus didn’t cite other scholars or Rabbis. He spoke as one with authority, one who could speak on his own, not one who based his teachings on other people. He clearly told everyone that His teachings came directly from God.

This difference is important because not only were the disciples following a calling to someone new, it was someone with a totally new way of teaching. They knew nothing about what this new calling would look like as students of the Christ.

Disciples accepting Christ

John

In fact, a small group of disciples accepted Jesus as the Christ some time before the “calling” we read about in Matthew. John 1 tells us that they believed in him, and followed him to Jerusalem for a brief time ( 35Again the next day John was standing with two of his disciples, 36and he looked at Jesus as He walked, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” 37The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. 38And Jesus turned and saw them following, and said to them, “What do you seek?” They said to Him, “Rabbi (which translated means Teacher), where are You staying?” 39He said to them, “Come, and you will see.” So they came and saw where He was staying; and they stayed with Him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. 40One of the two who heard John speak and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41He found first his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which translated means Christ). 42He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).43The next day He purposed to go into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to him, “Follow Me.” 4). 

Jesus then began His Galilean ministry alone – while Peter, Andrew, and Philip when back home for a while. At that point they did not know if they would ever see Him again.

Matthew

What a relief when he showed up at the seaside that we read about in Matthew 4 (18As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 19“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.”20At once they left their nets and followed him.21Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, 22and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.)

So Jesus came back for Peter and Andrew as they were fishing. We have to wonder if they told their families first or just went off with Jesus. While excited, they were probably also a little fearful of what would come next. 

James and John literally left their father with the boat and followed Jesus right away. That is pretty a pretty impressive display of faith!

Other callings

Matthew was a tax collector when Jesus called him. He must have been scared, as well.

Tax collectors were hated by Jews, and he knew this. To be called to be one of Jesus’s followers would have meant being on the outs with everyone else that was being called because he would be hated by the other disciples. 

Imagine the fear and doubt Matthew had. Did Jesus really call him? What was he going to do? How would he live so closely with the others who clearly hated him? 

Nathaniel was under a fig tree when Jesus called him. 

Simon the Canaanite was a zealot

Even the disciples we know less about – Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thadaeus, Simon, and Judas – all did something before Jesus called them. And they all followed Him, despite any fears they may have felt.

They left what they knew, including their families, to follow this man who apparently was so compelling they couldn’t resist him. 

Imagine the fear involved with that! They were leaving everything they knew, their families, their security, their comforts… to follow a man they didn’t really know. On what could be a whim. They had no idea where they would sleep or get their food. There was no certainty that their families would be taken care of – or if they would even see their families again. They had no idea what this calling would look like because Jesus was a totally new kind of rabbi. Yet they obeyed the call and chose faith over fear. 

Learning from the disciples’ callings

When I was in college, God called me away from one plan to a better one. I thought I had it all figured out. I thought oceanography was my passion. But I was so wrong. 

When I switched majors to communication, I suddenly started passing all my classes. The information came so easy to me. It’s like I always knew the content – it made total sense. 

I continued my studies through a PhD in interpersonal and family communication and began life as a professor.

Around 2019 I was feeling the stirrings of a new calling to leave the university I was teaching at. I wasn’t sure where God was calling me TO, just that He would be calling me away from the job I’d held for over two decades.

In early 2020 I was ready to leave my secular teaching job. I told God the plan for how I was going to recoup the money and I was ready to charge ahead. I told God what my calling was. He said no. Repeatedly. I was heartbroken. I continued plugging away at my teaching job, feeling a huge loss that I could not overtly bring my faith into my teaching.

And life gets in the way

Then covid hit. And I had a steady job with benefits. I knew that obeying God was the right choice and I was so glad that I didn’t force my desired calling on God’s actual calling.

Don’t force your desired calling on God’s actual calling.

Dr. Andrea Towers Scott

In 2022 He really did call me out of that job and now I do amazing work with two Christian universities. God’s calling is so much better than anything I could have planned on my own.

In the last few years I’ve felt God adding a calling to my life. He’s been calling me to speak to others about the intersection of scripture and research about successful families. I wouldn’t have this blog if I hadn’t followed first the call to leave marine biology, and the second call to switch universities to have more time to share with you. 

This type of calling is not a frequent event. He doesn’t always call us from one path to another in quick succession.  We can be on one calling for a long time. The  first calling was nearly 30 years ago. While it’s morphed a bit, I’m still in that calling, I’ve just been called to a different location. The important thing is that we obey without giving in to fear about what if.

What if?

Had I spent time wallowing in fear about changing majors, I may have been kicked out of college and never found God’s best path for me. 

If I dug in my fearful heels and stayed at the secular university, I would have missed the opportunity to integrate Jesus into my classroom teaching. 

Had I given in to fear when God  called me to switch to online teaching, my schedule wouldn’t allow for me to speak to groups like this about the love and joy of serving our Lord in faith.

What about you?

Is God calling you out of something and into something new? is he calling you to shift direction? What’s holding you back? I encourage you to take time during your quiet time this week, and explore these questions with the Lord.

The joy of this calling

When we obey God’s call out of where we were and into someplace new, we need to obey with faith. Fear will always tell us we aren’t hearing God’s call correctly or that we will fail if we leave the familiar.

Fear will always tell us we aren’t hearing God’s call correctly or that we will fail if we leave the familiar.

Dr. Andrea Towers Scott

But the disciples can be our guide…they knew nothing about what they were signing up for, yet their faith overshadowed their fear and they became the group that took the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world. When we find Jesus as compelling as the disciples did, we too can follow a calling to something new and wonderful. 

How is God calling you to something new? Tell us below in the chat!

In Christ,

🌸 Andrea

Did you find this post interesting or helpful? If so, please share it – you can use the social buttons below.

When friends share posts they are telling Google that the site is worth showing to others – and that helps build my small business. Thank you for sharing!