Fulfilling Your Calling
By Jentezen Franklin
When Peter preached at Pentecost, 3000 souls came to Christ. But when Paul preached a guy nodded off, broke his neck and killed himself by falling out of a third story window. Hardly an encouraging sign! But Paul admitted that preaching wasn't his chief calling: "I come to you...timid and trembling...my message and my preaching were very plain" ( I Co 2:3-4 NLT) Yet
while he mightn't have been the most dynamic speaker in town, God empowered him to raise the man from the dead after he fell out of the window!
Listen: "Let every man abide in the....calling wherein he was called." What Paul lacked as a speaker, he more than compensated for as a writer. His pen changed the world. He was responsible for more New Testament doctrine than those who spent every waking minute with Jesus. He judged cities, straightened out fornicators, stopped incest, rebuked idolatry, and established
truth. Paul didn't need to preach; he wrote the inspired Word of God that enabled others to do it.
Something so powerful was released through Paul's writings that even when they threw him in jail he didn't ask for a lawyer or a gourmet meal because he was tired of prison food. No, he asked for more paper so that he could keep writing. In fact, Paul wrote all the way to the end of his life. And because he did, souls are still being reached today! What a legacy! And all
because one man devoted himself to his calling! Now for the question--are you devoting yourself to yours?
