Apostle Paul was a critical factor in establishing God’s eternal purposes, and great insights were given to him. There was a time in his life when he went to the wilderness of Arabia to seek God’s mercies personally; it was a time of honeymoon between him and the Lord Jesus. He came back with depths of revelation concerning mysteries that were before his time, appropriate for his time, and those that were for the future. It took him about 17 years after his encounter with the Lord Jesus to understand how to communicate the mind of God, and he did this in his crown epistle, the book of Ephesians. Paul said, “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.”
In the Book of Ephesians, he took us behind the scenes and showed us the mysteries he received, even though the time for some of them to manifest had not yet come. We must understand Paul’s mysteries to appreciate and utilize them in this current time. The revelation of mysteries covers the past, present and future. They are usually first in the heart of God before finding expression in time and eternity.
The three significant realities before time began were Foreknowing, Predestination and Calling. The first two have already been discussed in this series’s first and second parts.
I will attempt to shed some light on Calling as contained in scripture. Calling is a reality that existed before time, and we were formed in our mother’s womb. The Calling is an act of God’s authority by which God chose us to manifest as seeds of eternity. Within His authority, He determines our race, family, and location by an act of His sovereignty. God chose us with the hope that we will be separated unto Him when we arrive in time amidst numerous assortments of alternatives. There are three significant types of Calling. The first Calling is the call to salvation; it’s the organic experience of receiving God’s life that makes us have peace with God and puts us on the path of destiny. The second Calling is the Calling of having the character, the competence and the command of Christ. It is the Calling of conforming to the image of the Son of God,” and Paul calls this Calling the third Calling, which is the Calling to our specific function and purpose in God. These are the things that God wants us to become, to have places He wants us to get to, people He wants us to associate with before we spend eternity with Him.
God happens to be a God of hope, and He hopes that when you choose Him, you must make a choice and the call He has for your life. The challenge for us in this time is to maintain and be consistent with God’s intention for us.” He has chosen us in Him before the foundations of the world.”
More details will be shared in Part 4; JUSTIFICATION
A friend
Enofe Igbinoba
Came to know the Lord genuinely before his teenage age, He is committed to building believers into the fullness and stature of Christ, through the instrumentality (teaching) of God’s Word and the dynamics of the Holy Spirit.