Called by God

Transcript S3E7

 Called by God 

[00:09] Hello, I'm Tony Kostas, and welcome to Led Into Love.

[00:13] It's now been three months since my last episode and those of you who don't see me or know me outside of this podcast, might be wondering where I've been and whether there were going to be any more podcasts. Well, there are – and here I am again!

The reason why you haven't heard from me in that time is because my wife Judy and I were away for three months, based in England and visited quite a number of people and communities of believers in England and in Europe. These people have a place in our lives in a particular way. 

Many of them, the older ones, I've known for 50-plus years and others I've known for most of their lives.

But the common thing between them and among them and in their relationship with me is they're all people who at some time in their lives, have given their lives to God in such a way that they've allowed Him to lead them as to what they should be doing with their lives - where they should be living.

 [01:28] That's something that God first led me into many years ago and called me to live for Him in that way. And this ‘Led Into Love’ podcast is just the latest thing that I'm doing in that regard.

 I want you to know that in making this podcast, this is not something that I thought of or dreamed up or decided to do at this latter part of my life. It's something that God also led me into.

For those of you again, who know me, that's no surprise.I know that you know the story and also you have a whole background as to why I'm doing something like this now. 

But if you don't know me, I'm not trying to do anything clever. What I'm doing is simply obeying God. Joyfully obeying God. Gladlyobeying God, in sharing my life with Him - my relationship with Him - with you. Because the reality of relationship with God is something that is very personal and it's communicated person-to-person.

Jesus could come and do what He did because He came as an expression of His Father who sent Him into this world. And everything He did had its roots - had its source in His relationship with the Father. I want to tell you that everything I share with you here has its source in my relationship with God.

[03:02] 

In my recent journey, I've been with people who, by their own choice, living where they're living now, doing what they're doing now, because they know that God wants that of them. 

Now. I realize that could sound a bit vague to you. But it's not vague. It's relating to genuine people who by their own choice, committed their lives to God and made themselves available to Him.

Which is the very - the very - root of any true evil expression of God in this world through any human being.

Because God calls people to express Him. To be examples. To be witnesses. To reveal Him to this world. Not through something they've learned. Not through some particular religious system that they become a part of. But simply because God has called them and they're aware that God has called them.

In some of my episodes, I have talked about my early life: the way that I came to know Jesus at 17, and how, after entering into what I like to call ‘the Christian subculture,’ I followed a path. The first step was very similar to what many young Christians, like me at that point, would have followed. But God led me. He led me in ways of his own choosing.

[04:36] 

And the time came when He told me, 53 years ago, that He had given me a particular calling. And part of this calling was that He would also not only give me something to do (I already had an established Christian ministry) but that He would build a body of people around that calling. Not around me personally, but around the calling.

And God's done that. And over the years, that body has grown and matured. And that body is represented through the lives of people now in different parts of the world. A whole diversity of people in different places, different ages and different backgrounds, but all of them living for God.

Now, I want to emphasize that living for God is something, first and foremost, that no person can do purely at a whim just because they choose to. People can only do that - you can only live for God first and foremost - because He is calling you.

Now, I know that I've shared with you before - and it's true that for as long as I can remember, right back into my early childhood, I was looking for God. I wanted to know God. So, it's true that God was able to call me because I was looking for Him. But where did that desire for God come from?

I don't know. But God had His purpose for my life.

[06:13] 

Now, if you have a desire for God, first and foremost - and I certainly hope that that has something to do with the reason why you're listening to me right now - then you need to ask God, is He calling you? And what does He want of you?

It's a very great privilege to be called by God, but there's another thing, too, that is actually the opposite of that - that is a counterfeit of that.

Jesus, in his famous ‘Sermon on the Mount,’ one of the portions of it that isn't repeated nearly as often as some of the better-known ones is when Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

And then He went on to say, “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’”

Now, that was their claim. They said: “Come on! Like we did these things in your name!” 

I mean, this wasn't just like they were preaching or anything. They prophesied - that is, speaking God's words. They drove out demons and they performed many miracles!

And yet, without any acknowledgment of that, Jesus says, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”

And what does that mean? It simply means that if these people - any such person, even if they're performing miraculous things - if that person has not been in relationship with Him…

Jesus said that no man can come to Him unless the Father draw him. Those people haven't responded to God. And those people are not truly expressing Him because they are not living in relationship with Jesus. 

When Jesus says, “Depart from me, I never knew you,” That ‘knowing’ is personal intimacy. 

There was no intimate relationship between that person and God.

[08:30] 

For me, speaking personally, the very core of my life - I was going to say ‘my relationship with God,’ but my life, period – firstly is my relationship with God. And that relationship with God is not relationship with a religion. It is not being part of anything that is a religious system or a doctrinal statement.

It's purely a matter of being someone who knows that God has called them - who knows what it is to respond to that call and to commit to live according to the will of God.

Jesus said, the only one who enters the Kingdom of Heaven is the one who does the will of His Father.

When He's talking about the Kingdom of Heaven, He's not just talking about what we think of as Heaven - like after you die. He was talking about the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth, which means that realm that God rules. 

Because God's Kingdom is coming. And even while it's coming, it is here!

And it is here in the lives, and in the relationships, of those who belong to Him in this world.

If you belong to Him. If you are responding to Him. If your desire is to live for him and to do His will. Then welcome to the kingdom!

If not, you can do anything, you can do the most miraculous things - the most amazing things. People could applaud you. People could acknowledge you. People could put you up on a high pedestal. People could think of you as being a very godly person. But unless your life, your ministry, what you do, even if it's miraculous, is not a genuine expression of your relationship, your intimacy with Jesus -that He knows you. Then you have nothing to give - and in fact, you misrepresent Him.

On the other hand, to represent Jesus out of a true relationship with Him is a very simple thing.

[10:52] 

When Jesus called his 12 disciples to Him, He didn't choose learned people. He didn't choose impressive people. He chose those that He knew His Father had drawn to Him.

And the wise and the learned and the religious leaders of Jesus time despised, not only Jesus but these people, because they saw nothing in them, nothing about them, nothing in their words, nothing in their lives that fitted with their system or their image or their standard, even of what godly people are like.

Now, it's been my privilege for most of my life not only to live for God myself, but to come to know people who have a desire for Him like my desire. Who live for Him like I live for Him. 

Many of those that my wife and I have been spending time with over the last three months are such people. They're the people that God is pleased to acknowledge, to bless with His presence, and to lead deeper and deeper into relationship with Himself and with one another. 

They are the people that I have the privilege of sharing my life with, and they're the people whose lives I have the privilege of sharing in.

[12:23] 

And I want to encourage you, not discourage you. But I want to encourage you that there's only one touchstone. Only one thing that counts, that validates whether or not you are living for God … let alone representing Him.

And that one thing is what actually exists between you personally and God. If it's there, it cannot help but be expressed. And so long as you live true to that, it cannot help but keep transforming your life.

I love what the Apostle Paul wrote about relationship with Jesus being like looking in a mirror. But unlike the relationship most of us have with that face in the mirror, which is ourselves, you're not experiencing yourself. You're looking in the mirror and you're experiencing Jesus. 

You are seeing the reality of Jesus. And you are being changed from one degree of glory to another, because of what is happening between you and Jesus.

[13:31] 

My whole purpose in sharing my heart with you like this is not to draw attention to myself and not to say things about me, other than I know that God has called me. I know that God has called me to make this podcast. I know that God has called me to share my heart like this. I know that God has called me to speak to your heart, if your heart is a heart that's seeking after God.

I don't know what that will mean for you, but I do know that you have the privilege of responding to God in the same simple way that I did when I was 17, and continuing to live like that with God.

If you place your life in God's hands and you open your heart to Him, He will speak to you. You will know that God is speaking to you. I can't tell you how that will happen, but I know how God speaks to me. And I know that I know when he does.

It's something deeper than any of my own feelings, any of my own imaginations. It's different to me hearing with my ears, but it's at the very depths of my being.

I know that many Christians would think of that as being really quite dangerous. And I understand why people say that. It must have looked very dangerous when those early Christian - not just the disciples of Jesus, those 12 disciples, - but then the Christians of the early church. People who discovered the reality of Jesus and when they responded to God and God's spirit came into their lives, they wanted to live for Him. And they encountered all sorts of difficulties and opposition.

But because of the reality of God in their lives, many people came to know the reality of God, came to know God - the real God. Came to know Jesus through those very people who had, in many cases, only just come to know Him themselves.

[15:43] 

So what's this all about? I'll tell you what it's all about. It's about God having His way in this world.

Jesus came into this world to defeat the works of the devil. This devil - the devil who holds this world, apparently, under his power. A power that seems so great that many Christians feel totally intimidated by it.

But why does the devil do that? Because the devil is the enemy of God, and the people that God loves, the devil wants to enslave and destroy. 

And many people in this world are apparently enslaved and being destroyed by the devil. Except that the world doesn't realize it's the devil. They look at all the difficulties and all the problems, and everyone has their own ideas and their own take on what is wrong with the world. But the simple thing is, the only thing that is wrong with the world is that the world does not acknowledge the God who made it! The human race does not acknowledge the God who created it to glorify Him.

But if you give yourself to God … 

God deals with individuals. It's always individual. God does not deal with … No matter how many billions of people there are in the world, God never deals with a mass of people. God deals with individuals. And God comes and lives in the lives and the hearts of those who come to Him.

You have the privilege of being one of those people. I've been privileged with being with some of those people over these last three months. And I come back energized! I come back with my heart alight with the privilege of not only being such a person, but of having relationship with these people.

[17:36] 

And now I'm once more making a Led into Love episode, I love the privilege of talking to you about my God and encouraging you to seek God. Seek him with all your heart. With all your mind. With everything that you have. Because Jesus also said, if you come to Him, He won't cast you out. He won't turn you away. 

He knows everybody's heart. 

He knows exactly what's going on inside your heart and inside your life.

He knows every thought.

He knows you perfectly.

He doesn't … it's not just that he can know you. He does know you and he knows everything about you.

This is your privilege to seek Him. To know Him. To give yourself to Him without any compromises, without any hesitation.

I'm not asking you to come, come and believe something religious.

I'm not asking you to change your mind about things. 

I am asking you to go to the depths of your being. Your being - the person you are deep down inside, who is created in the image of God, made for God, and find in there something that is responding to what I'm saying to you here.

And if that is there - or if you're already living for God - if that's there, respond to God and allow Him to make Himself known to you. If you know him already like this, then don't stop.

Keep going after God.

Keep living only by what you know in your heart.

Allow him to have His way in your life.

There's so much constantly in my heart, in my life, that I want to say to you that I want to encourage you in.

I encourage you to keep coming back and letting me share what is on my heart for you.

I would love it, of course, if we were having a dialogue right now, and the reason I'm making this podcast is not because I love the sound of my voice.

But I love God who loves you. And therefore, I love you with the love of God, even though I don't know you. And I want you to know Him and all that He is.