Living Unoffended: Embracing Your Holy Assignment

There's something powerful about understanding that your life has divine purpose woven into its very fabric. Not just a general sense of meaning, but specific assignments that were prepared for you before you took your first breath. This isn't reserved for a select few—it's the reality for every person who chooses to follow Christ.
The Call to Follow

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus issued the same simple invitation over and over: "Follow me." When He walked along the shores of Galilee and called fishermen from their nets, He didn't outline a detailed ministry plan or promise them impressive titles. He simply said, "Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people" (Matthew 4:19).

The beauty and challenge of this call is its simplicity. Following requires movement, trust, and surrender. It means leaving behind what's familiar—sometimes immediately, as James and John did when they left their boat and their father behind.

Here's the remarkable truth: many are called, but few are chosen (Matthew 22:14). Why?

Because being chosen requires first saying yes to the call. You cannot be appointed and set apart for God's use until you've answered His invitation to follow Him. The choosing comes after the following.

From Vessels to Instruments

Second Timothy 2:20-21 paints a vivid picture: "In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use and some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house and ready for every good work."

The critical phrase here is "if anyone cleanses himself"—or more accurately, allows the Master to cleanse him. Vessels cannot clean themselves. Only the Master can do that work. When we consecrate ourselves, surrender to His process, and allow Him to purify us, we become set apart as holy, useful to the Master, and ready for every good work.
Are you set apart for God's use? Are you useful to the Master? Are you ready for every good work?

The Appointment to Bear Fruit

Following Christ leads to appointment. Jesus made this clear in John 15:16: "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and produce everlasting fruit."

Let that sink in. The God of the universe chose you. Not only did He choose you, but He appointed you with purpose—to produce everlasting fruit. And there's only one thing in all creation that is everlasting: the souls of men and women.

Your primary appointment is to make disciples, to share the good news of the gospel, to help build God's kingdom. This isn't optional for some believers and not for others. If you've said yes to following Christ, you've been appointed to bear fruit.

The promise attached to this appointment is equally powerful: "The Father will give you whatever you ask for using my name." This doesn't mean God becomes a cosmic vending machine. Rather, it means God will provide everything you need in alignment with the appointment He's placed upon you.

Sometimes what you need isn't what you want. Sometimes He gives hard things, painful things. He allows testing, trials, and loss—not to harm you, but to prepare you for the assignments ahead. Nothing is wasted in God's economy. Every experience, every season, every challenge is shaping you for the work He's prepared in advance for you to do.

The Progressive Nature of Holy Assignments

While the call to follow never changes and the appointment to bear fruit remains constant, the specific assignments God places upon your life will shift and evolve throughout your journey. These assignments are almost always progressive—and rarely impressive at the start.

Think about elementary school spelling tests or multiplication tables. You couldn't skip to the tens until you'd mastered your ones, twos, and threes. Assignments build upon one another. The small, seemingly insignificant tasks prepare you for greater things.

Consider a youth group of two girls meeting in a converted choir closet—a cramped, dusty space with six rusty folding chairs arranged in a circle. Not impressive by any measure. Yet that assignment, embraced with faithfulness and obedience, became foundational preparation for greater ministry impact.

We all want to skip assignments. We look at the choir closet and dream of the auditorium.

We want to bypass the mundane and jump straight to the miraculous. But God infuses ordinary tasks with His extraordinary power when we're set apart for His use. The mundane becomes sacred when we recognize it as part of His holy calling.

Ephesians 2:10 reminds us: "We are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Before the foundation of the earth, He knew you. He prepared specific works for you—not for someone else, but for you specifically.

Showing Up As Yourself

Here's where many of us stumble. After giving God our list of excuses (like Moses did—five times!), when we finally agree to show up, we try to show up as someone else.

We think we need more credentials, more training, more polish. We look at others and try to wear their armor, forgetting the story of young David facing Goliath. King Saul's armor didn't fit David because David wasn't assigned to face the giant as Saul. He was assigned to show up as himself—with a stone and a sling.

God doesn't need you to become someone else. He needs you to show up as you, with your unique gifts, experiences, and perspective. The assignments He's prepared were designed specifically for who you are, not who you think you should be.
The Cost of the Oil

Gifts are given freely. You were born with them. But the anointing—the oil—that costs something.

You can be gifted and still be empty, talented but dry, visible but powerless. The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). He won't take them back. But you must still seek the oil.

The oil costs surrender. It costs time in the secret place alone with God. It costs repentance—true repentance that turns away from sin, not just confesses it. It costs stillness, obedience when no one's watching, your ego, your titles, your need for recognition.

Creativity without oil is just performance. But creativity with oil becomes presence. And presence changes people.
Ready for Every Good Work

Acts 20:24 captures the heart of embracing holy assignments: "My life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others the good news about the wonderful grace of God."

Your life has purpose. You have been called, appointed, and assigned. The question isn't whether God has work for you to do. The question is whether you'll say yes, allow Him to cleanse and set you apart, and faithfully embrace even the small, progressive assignments He places before you.

Don't settle for being merely gifted. Seek the anointing. Pay the price. Show Up. Let what you carry break yokes and change lives.

You are God's masterpiece, created for good works prepared in advance for you to do. Will you embrace your holy assignment?