The Hope of Your Calling

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by Nikki Arana

There is a ritual that I observe every morning that is my way of inviting God to speak to me. I reach for my Bible next to my bed and open it. I read the random page that I find myself looking at. Recently it was in Ephesians 4. I began to read – There is one body and one Spirit – just as there is also one hope that belongs to the calling you received. The calling I received? One hope? I read on. . . . There is one Lord one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of us all, Who is above all (Sovereign over all), pervading all and living in us all.

I set my Bible down and closed my eyes and tried to grasp what I had just read.

There is one hope that belongs to the calling I received! I know God’s call on my life. It is to write . . . about many things. There is one hope that belongs to that calling. Belongs. Not available if I ask, not connected sometimes, not dependent on what is going on in my life. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, all manifest as One Hope that belongs to the call to write that I received.

That is His Truth. Written down for me to read! And beyond that the verse says that He is sovereign over all, pervading all and living in us all. Living in me. I have His strength and authority to draw on as I write. I can put to death fear and discouragement. I don’t have to accept them. God put them to death on the cross 2000 years ago. Why do I insist on embracing what is dead when He has given me life? I can choose to walk in His Truth.

How often I focus on my reality. Recounting the circumstances of my life as they look through my natural eyes. But I don’t have to do that. I can strip myself of my natural man and the hopelessness that springs from the point of view of my natural mind. I can be constantly renewed in the Spirit and walk in my new nature created in God’s image and live in the hope gifted to me by Jesus Christ.

It is not only available, it is already in me. This is His reality. What I see with my natural eyes and think with my natural mind is death. Like my book won’t be published, or my finances are inadequate. It’s not my book. It’s His book. How can my finances be inadequate? He is my provider. The only thing that is dead is my life as I once knew it. That is the life of my natural man, that old man that we buried the day we accepted our One Hope. How I praise and thank Him for putting to death that old life.

This is His Truth. And so it is my Truth.

Today I choose to walk in it. You can too!


Nikki Arana is an award-winning author of women’s fiction, poetry, and magazine articles whose work has been published in the United States and Canada. She has won several national awards, including the Carol Award for Women’s Fiction (twice), the Write Touch Readers Award and others. To learn more: www.nikkiarana.com.

Comments 0

  1. Nikki, what you said really spoke to me. I need a daily reminder that what I write belongs to Him. Praying everytime I sit down to write is something that must become a way of life for me. Why do I tend to ‘forget’ to do that? Everything is His and praying to Him before beginning anything new should be ever present on my mind.

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