The concept of walking in the Spirit was created for us…to be actualized in this current world context (Col. 3:1-3; Gal. 2:20, 5:25; Eph. 3:11-12).
God-composed journeys of faith are written and managed by God to lift us up and out of a journey of self into the higher ways and thoughts of God. This is the humanly inconceivable fork-in-the-road…the supernatural point…where a journey of self and a journey of faith divide asunder.
This God-invented worldview of journeys of faith is another component of the unselfish character trait of divine love. This is why without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6)…because without releasing our faith and stepping-out into our God-composed adventure of faith…it is difficult in a system of reality having free-will choice…for God to help us.
Before we compare the magnitude of our callings unfavorably with the giants of faith in the Bible…let’s listen to what else is said by and about Paul on the subject of new covenant callings of God (Jer. 31:31-34).
In Acts chapter 22 Paul defends himself before the rioting mob of people in Jerusalem, by recounting what Ananias said to Paul in Damascus: “The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth. For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard” (Acts 22:14-15).
Would most of us choose for ourselves the challenging life-script for Paul as recorded in the book of Acts…oftentimes teetering on the edge of the precipice of life-and-death…to walk in the singularly unique program that would successfully evangelize the first-century Greco-Roman world…and generate the divinely inspired and sanctioned composition of Paul’s New Testament letters to the early churches…that define orthodox doctrines and practice for Christian discipleship?
Would most of us choose the program of Abraham to patiently wait for the birth of Isaac…and then to triumphantly push through the challenging test of faith on Mount Moriah…to become the “father of faith?”
Would we choose to walk in the steps of Joseph in Potiphar’s house and Pharaoh’s prison…in order to be trained to become the governor of Egypt and to set in motion the extraordinary events that would create the future nation of Israel?
Would we be willing to pay a similar high-price…the cost of jettisoning our worldly claims to conventional normalcy and thinking…by stepping into our God-composed adventure of faith tailored specifically and narrowly to match our created talents and abilities…come what may?
If God enlists us…asks us to follow Him into a fulfilling yet challenging calling that will help other people…but has the element of our having to give up some normally expected aspirations contained within conventional life…would we say yes to God and go…despite the cost?
In my opinion, the four New Testament gospels, the Book of Acts, the apostle’s letters to the churches, and Revelation…in one aspect serve as a more universal expansion of the biblical narrative stories of faith recorded in the Old Testament…applicable to every Spirit-born Christian in the relationships God wants to have with believers “from the least of them to the greatest of them” (Jer. 31:34).
As Paul, James, Peter, John, and Jude write their letters to the early churches…the precise details of Christian discipleship are spelled-out in a more expanded way to cover the innumerable variations of callings and service that God intends to occur in the New Covenant Age…of the increased number and depth of personal relationships between God and people…from the least to the greatest.
In my opinion, this means that God intends to insert into the life-script of every modern Christian…who will pick up their cross to follow Jesus…some measure of this radical biblical faith we see throughout the Bible…but in a measure and to an extent that displaces our ways with God’s higher ways…in New Testament modulated gradations of callings that match what the apostles are writing about…to the Christians in the early churches.
This means that I do not have to have as spectacular a life-script calling as Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Daniel, Elijah, Peter, or Paul…and still have a very meaningful and fulfilling relationship with God that produces beneficial fruit that will bless myself and others.
This is what Jesus Christ is asking of Spirit-born Christians today…not within the worldly conventional realm of self-sovereignty…but in the divinely created worldview realm of novel, adventurous, God-scripted journeys of faith.
Picking up our cross for the sake of Jesus and the gospel (Mk. 8:34-35)…is a divine creation of God above and far outside of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…which by its very existence as an alternate viable worldview…argues for the divine origin of the Bible.
The Cross in the Christian Life 