Paul writes in 2 Timothy that God "has saved us and called us with a holy calling." Here is a touchstone by which we may try our calling. It is a holy calling, "not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace."

This calling forbids all trust in our own doings and conducts us to Christ alone for salvation. But then it purges us from dead works to serve the living and true God. As he who called you is holy, so must you be holy.

If you are living in sin, you are not called! But if you are truly Christ's, you can say, "Nothing pains me so much as sin; I desire to be rid of it; Lord, help me to be holy." Is this the panting of your heart? Is this the tenor of your life toward God and his divine will?

Again, in Philippians, Paul speaks of "the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Is then your calling a high calling? Has it ennobled your heart and set it upon heavenly things? Has it elevated your hopes, your tastes, your desires? Has it upraised the constant tenor of your life, so that you spend it with God and for God?

Another test we find in Hebrews: "partakers of the heavenly calling." A heavenly calling means a call from heaven. If man alone calls you, you are uncalled. Is your calling of God? Is it a call to heaven as well as from heaven?

Unless you are a stranger here, and heaven your home, you have not been called with a heavenly calling. For those who have been so called declare that they look for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God, and they themselves are strangers and pilgrims upon the earth.

Is your calling thus holy, high, heavenly? Then, beloved, you have been called of God, for such is the calling wherewith God does call his people.