You Were Made for This: the Call of God and the Character it Demands

This article is based on Warren Wiersbe's "On Being a Servant of God"

There is a verse that should sit at the foundation of every preaching ministry — not just as a theological truth to affirm, but as a living reality to return to whenever the work gets hard, the results seem thin, or you start to wonder whether any of this matters.

"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10)

You were not an accident. Your gifts, your temperament, the era you were born into, the people God has placed around you — none of it is random. God made you the way He made you on purpose. And He has specific work, prepared in advance, that fits the person He made.

That isn't wishful thinking. It's the testimony of Scripture from beginning to end.

God Has a Specific Plan — and He Wants You to Know It

Psalm 139 is one of the most personal passages in the Bible. God saw you before you were formed. Every part of you was fashioned under His eye and with His purpose in mind. The same God who designed the universe designed you — which means that you, made in His image and redeemed by His Son, are not left without a purpose.

Wiersbe puts it simply: everything in the universe accomplishes some divine purpose. It would be strange — almost absurd — to believe that stars and seasons serve God's ends, but the people He bought with His own blood do not.

But here's what makes this more than a comforting platitude: God doesn't just have a plan for you. He wants to reveal it to you. He wants you walking in it, not stumbling around guessing. Our God is the God of the living, who dwells in the eternal present. He is not a distant architect who drew up the plans and then disappeared. He is a communicating Father who wants His servants to know their assignment.

Obedience Gives You Wings, Not Chains

One of the most liberating truths in Wiersbe's teaching is this: you are never more free than when you are fulfilling the plan God has for your life.

We tend to think of obedience as constraint — as the narrowing of options, the surrendering of preference, the closing of doors. But the opposite is true. The calling of God is not a cage. It is the thing you were built for. Stepping into it doesn't limit you; it releases you.

The image Wiersbe draws from Ephesians 2:10 is telling. God is not a mechanic who hands you a blueprint and walks away. He is a potter — shaping, reforming, patiently working with the clay. When the vessel is marred, the potter doesn't discard it. He makes it again (Jeremiah 18:4).

Moses fled into the desert after a disastrous beginning. Abraham lied — twice — about his own wife. Jacob schemed and deceived his way through decades of life. These are the patriarchs. The men God chose to found a nation. They failed, sometimes spectacularly, and God made them again.

This is not a license for carelessness. Wiersbe is careful to balance the grace of restoration with the sobering reality of persistent rebellion. Samson and Saul are the cautionary counterpart — men who resisted God so willfully that they were eventually removed from the scene. There is such a thing as disqualification (1 Corinthians 9:27). The potter can break a vessel beyond repair (Jeremiah 19).

The message is not "God will fix whatever you break." The message is: He is not finished with you yet — so don't quit, and don't be casual about sin.

The Appointments of God Through History

One of the most reassuring themes in Scripture is how deliberately God moves through history to put the right people in the right places at exactly the right moment.

Joseph didn't go to Egypt by accident — he was sent there to prepare the way for Israel's survival. Moses was born at precisely the moment Israel needed a deliverer. Hannah's long, aching prayer for a son wasn't unanswered — it was answered in God's time, and her son Samuel became the prophet who called a wayward nation back to its covenant. Esther found herself in the palace "for such a time as this."

These weren't coincidences. They were appointments. And the same God who orchestrated those appointments is still at work today, placing His servants exactly where they need to be for the work He has prepared.

If you are where God has called you — even if it's obscure, even if it's hard, even if it looks nothing like you imagined — you are not behind. You are on assignment.

Character Is the Weapon

Here is where Wiersbe's teaching becomes most searching: God doesn't primarily use our talent. He uses us — and that means the condition of who we are matters more than the sharpness of what we can do.

The Scottish pastor Robert Murray M'Cheyne said it with memorable force: "A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God."

Wiersbe builds on this image carefully. In Isaiah 49, Messiah is described as a sharp sword and a polished arrow. Paul urges believers in Romans 6 to yield their bodies to God as instruments — the Greek word means tools or weapons. When God used Moses' rod, He needed Moses' hand to lift it. When God used David's sling, He needed David's arm to swing it.

We are the weapons. And a weapon that hasn't been maintained — that's dull, corroded, or unsteady — cannot do the work it was designed to do.

This is where the media scandals that have plagued the church serve as a painful teacher. There is a Grand Canyon of difference between reputation and character. Popularity is not proof of spirituality. You can build a following without building the kingdom. The truth eventually surfaces — and when character is absent, the collapse tends to be proportional to the platform.

Life is built on character. And character is built on the small decisions that most people never see — the choices you make when no one is watching, the thoughts you entertain, the habits you cultivate, the things you say yes and no to over years and decades. Every one of those choices is the sculptor's chisel on the marble of who you are becoming.

The person with integrity understands that there is no sacred-secular divide in the Christian life. Whether you're in the pulpit or the grocery store, you are standing on holy ground. God is always watching — and He will be your judge.

Holiness Is Not a Hobby — It's a Weapon

One of the most bracing things Wiersbe writes is a correction to a subtle misuse of the pursuit of holiness. Some Christians have turned sanctification into a kind of private religious project — cultivating their inner life, fellowshipping with other like-minded believers, enjoying spiritual experience — while never channeling any of it into the work of the kingdom.

Jesus asked: "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not the things which I say?" (Luke 6:46)

God doesn't make us holy so that we can enjoy the experience of holiness. He makes us holy so that He can use us. Holiness is not the destination — it's the preparation. The goal, as Peter makes clear (2 Peter 1:5–8), is a life of faith that produces virtue, knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness, and love — qualities that make a servant neither barren nor unfruitful.

Paul put it in athletic terms to Timothy: the discipline of godliness requires the same focused sacrifice that elite athletes pour into their training. Every decision tested by one standard — will this make me more fit for the work God has called me to? That kind of discipline doesn't happen by accident. It requires the alarm clock, the open Bible, the unhurried prayer, the willingness to say no to good things for the sake of the best things.

What God Is Actually Building

In spite of what prosperity theology promises, Wiersbe is direct: "God's goal for our lives is not money but maturity, not happiness but holiness, not getting but giving."

The point of your preaching ministry is not the largest attendance, the most impressive program, or the most polished production. It is people — people being built into the image of Jesus Christ, people who become fruitful in God's hands, people who in turn build others.

The worker, in God's economy, is more important than the work. If the worker is what he ought to be, the work will follow. Ministry is not manufacturing — it's creating a spiritual atmosphere in which others can grow.

Remember that in God's eyes, the worker is more important than the work. If the worker is what he or she ought to be, the work will be done right and will please God.

A Word to the Preacher

You were made with a purpose. You have been called to a specific work that God prepared before you ever breathed. He is shaping you — not as a machine, but as a craftsman shapes a tool — and He intends for you to know why.

Walk in obedience. Guard your character. Cultivate holiness not as a hobby but as a weapon. And trust that the God who called you is the same God who will see you through — because what He starts, He finishes (Philippians 1:6).

You are the loser if you quit. But you don't have to quit. The Potter is still at work.

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Source: Warren Wiersbe, On Being a Servant of God (Baker Books)