Is Comfort Costing Your Calling?

Steve Harling was a Bible college student washing windows at a big house in Essex Fells, New Jersey, when the owner stepped outside with a glass of iced tea. The man, a successful medical professional, asked the two young window washers what they planned to do with their lives. Steve's friend said he was thinking about becoming a missionary. Steve can still picture the man's face as he answered, "What on earth are you thinking? You could be living in a house like this."

Most of us have been on one side of that conversation or the other. We have wondered why someone would give up a good thing, or felt a little relieved when their choices made ours look reasonable. Underneath the question sits an assumption that comfort and security are the goal.

AN HEIR WITH TWENTY-FOUR OXEN

That same question hangs over one of the stranger scenes in the Old Testament. God tells the prophet Elijah to anoint a successor, and the man he names is Elisha, who grew up in a wealthy home. Steve pointed out that his father's name, Shaphat, means lawyer, and the family lived in a place called Abel Meholah, which means dancing meadows. The country was in a drought, and this was still a good place to be from.

"So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat. He was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair. Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him." (1 Kings 19:19)

Think about that cloak. It had been to a dried-up brook, to a widow's kitchen with only a little bread and oil, to Mount Carmel where fire fell from heaven, and to a cave at Horeb. Steve joked that it probably smelled like every one of those places. A stranger drapes it over a young man plowing with hired hands all around him, then walks away. Elisha understood what it meant. The cloak carried spiritual authority, and he had just been called.

WHAT THE FAMILY MIGHT HAVE SAID

Picture Elisha telling his parents what happened. Steve imagined their answer: Son, are you crazy? We set you up with an inheritance. That prophet is the man the king is chasing, the one who stopped the rain for three years. And by the way, we would like grandchildren, and we would like them nearby.

Elisha asked to kiss his parents goodbye first, and Elijah's reply was abrupt. Then comes the detail nobody forgets. "He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He burned the plowing equipment to cook the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out to follow Elijah and became his servant." (1 Kings 19:21)

Steve asked the congregation to picture the barbecue, with neighbors in folding chairs and paper plates asking each other why a man would burn his own livelihood. With the plows gone, Elisha had nothing to return to if the road got hard. Steve called it "blind faith and radical obedience," and the Great Commission has always been carried out by people like that.

PEOPLE WHO BURNED THEIR PLOWS

William Borden was a young millionaire who felt called to reach Muslims in China. Friends told him to set some money aside in case it did not work out. He wrote "No reserves" in his journal the night he answered the call, "No retreats" the night he boarded the ship, and "No regrets" the night before he died, four months later.

Steve knows people like that today. A friend in southern Ethiopia is raising sixteen children in his home. They come from a tribe that believes a baby whose lower teeth come in first is demon-possessed, and those babies are left out to die. He told the families, give them to me. Another friend, Annabelle, ran away from home in Uganda at thirteen to avoid an arranged marriage, survived the streets of Kampala, and met Jesus there. Eleven thousand girls have since graduated from the program she started for girls on those same streets.

A CROWD JOHN COULD NOT COUNT

Steve recently stood in the cave on Patmos where tradition says John received the vision of Revelation. One piece of it explains his passion. "After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb." (Revelation 7:9)

That crowd is the finish line of what Jesus asked of us. "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 28:19) Steve shared some numbers. When John wrote, historians estimate there was one Christian for every 360 people. Today it is closer to one in seven, and there are believers in nearly every nation, including places like Somalia and North Korea where the church meets quietly in homes.

Steve is convinced that the vision is within sight. He thinks it will take better priorities, creative ways into closed countries, and more of what Elisha had, which is bolder faith and more obedience.

PLOWS CLOSER TO HOME

Steve told the church that Cornerstone clearly loves missions, then pushed it further. He had driven past a mosque not far from the church and wondered whether anyone here knows someone who goes there. What would it look like to invite that person to your home for Thanksgiving? He asked the same about the immigrants in this community.

Other plows are easier to find than people expect. You could join a video Bible study with believers from other countries, support a national evangelist who lives on less than three thousand dollars a year, or offer your skills to a missionary who needs a website built. None of it has to be complicated.

ONE PLOW THIS WEEK

Elisha's story comes down to a question each of us can answer honestly. What are we holding onto that keeps us from following? For some it is money, for others a comfortable routine, and for others the fear of an awkward conversation with a neighbor. Steve put it in words that are hard to shake: "Jesus burned the plows for you. Are you willing to burn a plow for him?"

This week, choose one person from a different culture or background and invite them to your table before Thanksgiving. It is a small plow, and Jesus gave up far more. "He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant." (Philippians 2:7)

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To hear Steve Harling's full teaching on this passage, click here.