//Thoughts & Realizations// A Higher Calling

Instagram has become a place for discovering new things and Tapestry Magazine is one of them. Somehow I stumbled upon their Instagram  page one day (I believe it was via their Creative Curator's Instagram which is a must see also) and was completely captivated by the beauty and the message of their vision! Tapestry Magazine is not simply a style and lifestyle magazine but it is a creative endeavor filled to the brim with real life stories of growth and lessons from our Heavenly Father. It is an invitation to discover who you are in the light of Christ. Needless to say not only are the images of this masterpiece stunning and beautiful, but the words within the pages are powerful as well! On that note, I thought I would share some of my thoughts that I took away the other day from reading one of the articles. 

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I have always been moved and inspired by the charge and mindset of a "Higher Calling" because after all our lives as a whole are all about living out a higher calling, in the since that this world is not our home for we are meant for a place far more incredible and breathtaking than we could ever comprehend. The "Higher Calling" is a charge and call to something More.....something GREATER.....something bigger than ourselves.....something ABOVE the world! A call to something we could never do on our own, but only accomplish through the mighty power of God and his work in our lives. The Higher Calling is not just the promise that when we leave this earth we will than enter our true home, a glorious heavenly kingdom to worship day and night with our Heavenly Father; but also that our "Higher Calling" is our destiny and calling from God upon our lives here on earth.....what we are meant to do and the people we are meant to be. 

Romans 12:2 

"Therefore do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Than you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will."

We are called to a life of "non-conformity" where we don't go with the flow! We are the people called to walk to the right when everyone else is walking to the left....to stand out in a crowd and not blend in. I loved what Jessi Cross, the founder of Tapestry Magazine said, when she mentioned the idea of a Higher Calling by relating it to the life of Moses, a man who went up a mountain to experience God fully in his bright and radiant GLORY! Essentially the higher calling is the idea of climbing up the mountain.....of taking the road less traveled and moving beyond yourself  to truly experience God for all that he is rather than contenting yourself to a life of the steady unchanging norm as you make camp at the bottom of the mountain and don't bother to venture up the peak. For Jesus tells us in 1 John 2:15 "Do not love the world or anything in the world." 

The world is the camp at the bottom of the mountain and God....our Higher Calling is at the point of the peak cutting through the clouds to Heaven. Therefore what will you choose? Will you allow yourself to get caught up in the flow of the world, slowly loosing yourself in its pressures and lifestyle or will you hike up the mountain to experience God for all that he is and take hold of all that he has planned for your life, 

Jessi Cross said: "When we assume the posture of the higher call we become like Moses, a man who would refuse to move unless the Lord moved before Him, who wanted more than a shadow of the Lord, a ma who dared to see His face and a man who didn't think much about his own name-- he just wanted to make 'His' name known." 

2 Corinthians 4:17

"For monetary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory, far beyond all comparison." 

That is our Higher Calling....to Know HIM and Be Know! To suffer and live as Christ so that his glory may be revealed in and through us as we are be called higher towards our eternal glory! 

When I think of the topic and vision of a Higher Calling I can't help but be reminded of C.S. Lewis's The Weight of Glory which is packed to the brim with words that inspire a desire for something more within our souls and a realization that this world is truly NOT our home, for we long for a place further away and far more splendorous than our worldly earth. 

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” 
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

 We are aliens and this world is not our home! Don't be swayed by the world or Satan's schemes to turn you onto another path. Embrace your Higher Calling and climb the mountain as your eyes are fixed confidently on the author and perfecter of your life and your higher glory! For just as C.S. Lewis states: 

“The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.” 
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

-Madison

Have you hard of Tapestry Magazine?

Are you familiar with The Weight of Glory? 

What are your thoughts on a Higher Calling?