Mike Milton offers a blog post reflecting on his decision to accept a call to serve as Chancellor of Reformed Theological Seminary, USA.
The post’s title: “Vocation as Sanctification: Some Thoughts as I Accept the Call to Become the Next Chancellor of Reformed Theological Seminary” gives an indication that Milton’s thoughts go beyond his own circumstances, but also embrace the way in which God uses the various fields in which His people serve to shape and refine their Christian character. Trust, humility, love for others; these and other qualities can grow within us if we recognise that our vocations are not so much about demonstrating our strengths, but God growing us out of our weaknesses.
His thoughts resonated with me.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Humbling Experience of Calling
I tell our students that “your vocation is your sanctification,” that is, that in the ordinary/extraordinary life of following our Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, we continually discover that we are not our own, that we are being led by His Spirit to places we would never have imagined to have gone on our own:“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go” (John 21.18).
In this process of following Him, we are so often driven to our knees in desperate prayer, “Lord, I didn’t expect to go this way! I had plans to follow Thee in this way!” Yet in the perpetual response to His loving, but often, strong arm on our shoulder to go this way and not that way, as St. Paul was forbidden to go to Asia but to turn to Europe (Acts 16.6), we are gently and sometimes severely reminded that our Savior Himself modeled perfect Sonship in His obedience to the Father:”
“So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise’” (John 5.19).
So, too, we, the little preachers of Jesus, particularly those ordained as evangelists, as I was so long ago now, go as we are led by His Spirit, waiting on Him, seeking Him, listening out for Him, watching providential doors opening and shutting, and being reminded that we are not our own but have been bought with a price; [1 Corinthians 6.20; 7.23.] that we are but itinerants dispatched under the command of Christ as He fulfills His purposes in the world. Then as we conduct our ministries, as we “persist” in our personal devotional life with Jesus Christ and our “teaching,” we shall “save” our “hearers” and ourselves Vocation becomes sanctification.
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