There is no secular work for the Christian.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for preaching my sermon for me Tommy. So this will be this will be short. I'm sure he never does that to anybody else. But by way of introducing myself I want to bring you greetings from Emmanuel Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky and and also let you know the significance that Pastor Tommy has had in Emmanuel's life as a church family.

Providentially speaking in God's providence and care. Emmanuel probably would not exist if it weren't for Tommy's love for people and love for people that are hard to love and he served a small dying church filled with Elderly saints called Emmanuel Baptist Church in downtown Louisville that had been overlooked by so many people.

Was being overlooked by the association the association to ask them to close multiple times. They were hanging on and Pastor Tommy is the one who came in and started to teach to teach those brothers and sisters the truth and the gospel and the word and others followed with him and I've not only benefited from that over the last 20 years being a member at Emmanuel being a deacon at Emmanuel being an elder at Emmanuel being on staff as a pastor at Emmanuel and now being a business owner at Emmanuel.

I Also have benefited because my wife came to know the Lord because of those efforts by Tommy and Eve. She was a piano player in the church. She was a music student at the University of Louisville and she was literally coming to get a paycheck to play the piano.

No one could play the piano in church. They needed to sing hymns so they decided to put an advertisement at University of Louisville and hope they could get a piano player to come plunk out the hymns on Sunday and she thought that was pretty easy money and Sorry to come in to play the piano thought she was a Christian and was influenced by the people who had started to come to Emmanuel and so if in all in all honesty.

Thank you, brother. Like my my family would not exist if it had not been for your love and compassion. So I I want to give Tommy thanks for that and to also encourage you that Your pastor is one who loves the Lord and he loves you and he has always loved people.

And I'm not saying that you're hard to love people. But he even loves hard to love people and I'm sure that there are some of those in Newton Conover at least. So, thank you. It's it's an honor to be here.

It's an honor to speak to you from God's Word this morning. And I want you to open your Bibles to 1st Corinthians 7. 1st Corinthians 7 and if you'll stand with me, I'm gonna read from the ESV 1st Corinthians 7 starting in verse 17 and ending in verse 24 and verse 24 is where we're gonna Spend most of our time this morning.

This is the Word of the Lord. Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised.

Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised. Let him not seek circumcision for neither circumcision counts for anything nor Uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God.

Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. Were you a slave when called do not be concerned about it. But if you can gain your freedom avail yourself of the opportunity. For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord.

Likewise he who was free when called as a slave of Christ. You were bought with a price. Do not become slaves of men. So brothers in whatever condition each was called there. Let him remain with God father.

We thank you for your word, which is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path apart from it. We'd be wandering in darkness. We would have no knowledge of who you are and what pleases you what causes you anger.

We would be wandering in darkness knowing that you exist because of your glory and all of creation. But not knowing what we could do to make right all of the wrongs that we know in our conscience. Thank you for your word we pray that you would teach us from your word in the power of the Spirit so that we would live lives as Brothers and sisters in the local church, but also as missionaries in this city and all across the earth.

You have promised us that the knowledge of your glory will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea and we pray Lord God that that day would Come quickly and that you would use us to accomplish it in Jesus name.

Amen, you can be seated. I Churches and My grandparents actually grew up in Baptist churches, too. So I'm I'm like a third generation Baptist. You could joke and say that I'm Baptist born and Baptist bred and when I die, I'll be Baptist dead.

So I'm pretty familiar with Christian lingo and how Christians talk about themselves and how they talk about the world and one way that is very very common for Christians to talk about themselves and to talk about their churches is the language around ministry and calling.

When I say ministry. Here's here's an example when I was 17 years old. I was called to the ministry and You probably know what that means. You know what? I meant when I when I experienced that when I was 17 when someone says that what they mean is I Want to be a pastor.

That's that's the ministry. I want to work in a church. I want to actually gain my income by being a pastor or a missionary or a church planner. I want to spend my life in a not secular vocation. I'm called to the ministry that secular vocation also is kind of Very familiar language with us.

We would say I you know, I work as a doctor. I work as a lawyer. I work in a manufacturing plan. I work in retail. I work in these jobs and it's a it's a secular job. Say it's a it's a secular job and When we say that what we mean is will these other jobs?

Ministry jobs have a sense of in some way being more important or more significant and that kind of talking about Christian life about The life of the local church is very common and I think that you probably I would assume that you probably kind of yeah I know I've experienced that I've probably said those kind of things and and no one no one At least in my experience would go so far as to say Yeah.

The a pastor is closer to God than a person who works as a doctor or a lawyer or a manufacturing worker. They wouldn't say that the pastor is closer to God. That's not what they mean. They wouldn't they wouldn't say that being a pastor a missionary is more important.

Say it is important, but it's not more important. It wouldn't go so far as to say that outright, but this language of Ministry and calling the way that we use it is really unhelpful. It's really unhelpful.

And it's unbiblical and that's what I want to look at first Corinthians 7 and show that to you. And I want to kind of tease it out a little bit and tell you why I think it's unhelpful. Why it's unhelpful is because it it functionally relegates the vast majority of believers to a Benchwarmer position in the Christian life.

It relegates the vast number of brothers and sisters to think of themselves as like they're the junior varsity team on the team of the Christian life and the varsity players are the pastors the church staff and The missionaries and the church planters, that's the varsity crew.

They're like the Navy SEAL team in the battle of the gospel in the advance of the kingdom, and we're back here Benchwarming we're working secular jobs. The best thing we could do is work hard not steal not be lazy.

Get a good paycheck so that we can give to those who are really on the front lines they're really doing the work the a team that's out there and That relegates the vast number of because it vast number of Christians because it's always going to be a minority of believers who serve in those roles the vast number of Christians Will work eight to five jobs 40 hours a week.

Owning a company or working for a company and they'll spend the vast number of their waking hours doing that and if they think that that is a sidetrack or a Distraction from the advance of the kingdom the vast majority of time that Christians live their lives All across the face of the earth.

Is offline? It's a necessary evil. We're just trying to be faithful, but don't really understand how this kind of helps the advance of the gospel aside from I get to make some money and give it away at the offering time and The best-case scenario is a Christian is like I'm just trying to work hard.

I Really like being involved in church programs, which is good. I Get a raise every once in a while because I'm honest. I don't lie and I don't cheat. I don't steal. But oftentimes it can look like a Christian who's just living for the weekend and their job is Some kind of drudgery.

In fact, there's a there's a song I'm going to read you the lyrics to it. I think it's pretty comical, but you'll understand the vibe you've experienced it. You know, the you know the phrase thank TGIF.

Thank goodness. Thank goodness. It's Friday. But that mentality about work is very very common. Here's the lyrics of this song. Oh, I've been working a week. I'm tired. Yeah, I've been working a week and I'm just living for the weekend.

Hey, hey, I got some money to spend. I just got paid got some money and I can't wait at six o 'clock. I'm out of here working all the time. Work is such a bind. Got some money to spend. I'm living for the weekend when it gets too much.

I live for the rush. Got some money to spend living for the weekend. Oh, man. Yeah, I've been working a week. I'm shot. Yeah, I've been working a week for what just living for the weekend. And then he repeats eight times living for the weekend living for the weekend.

But you get the point right he You have to work. So that you can have money to do what you want to do, but works not what you want to do. It's what you've got to do. Until you can get to the weekend and then you get to spend the money that you made at your job.

Did you see how that relegates your job? Just something that you have to do in order to do something that you want to do. I would rather I would rather you brothers and sisters and Christians everywhere see their job not as something that they have to do in order to do something that's important.

But something that God wants them to do and has equipped them to do and has given them his spirit in order to do with excellence and skill and success as an act of love for their neighbor and as the Primary way God wants you to advance his kingdom.

He actually puts you in your job. For a purpose and it's not So that you can spin your wheels hoping to do something else on the weekend or later on in life. So do you see how this this language is? It's well-meaning.

We understand what we mean by it. We don't mean anything hurtful or harmful. But do you see how it can be harmful? Do you see how it is unbiblical? I want to show you how it's unbiblical because we haven't seen the Bible yet.

You've just been listening to me talk so far 1st Corinthians 7 verse 24 so Brothers and that you can read that as so brothers and sisters so church family in whatever condition each was called There let him remain with God.

Here, here's my main point this morning I've always I'm always helped when a pastor tells me what he's trying to tell me. Then he tells me and then he reminds me what he told me. That's that's helpful.

So here's my main point your ministry to love God. To love your neighbor and to love the nation's is not dependent on your job your geographic location or any life condition. Your ministry to love God.

Love your neighbor and love the nation's is not dependent on your job. It's not dependent on your geographic location, and it's not dependent on any life condition. God is with you, no matter your calling or your condition.

We're going to see that in 1 Corinthians 7, and I want to just kind of like in the way that you would walk through a very, very beautiful garden, and you would stop and pause to look and gaze on something that catches your eye.

The Bible is a beautiful garden. We're walking through 1 Corinthians 7, and we're going to stop and pause in verse 24, three different places. Here's where we're going to stop and pause. Whatever condition each of you was called, let him there remain with God.

Those three important phrases. The first is whatever condition. Whatever condition each was called. You do not need to change your circumstances or your position in order to serve the Lord. This is really important because it's the exact opposite of the way things were in the Old Covenant.

If you remember in the Old Covenant, there was a temple, right? The temple was built to very exacting specifications. Who dwelled in the temple? The Lord dwelled in the temple. And around the temple, there was an entire colony, really, of priests who lived and ministered.

They offered sacrifices. There were particular specifications about the sacrifices you need to make in certain circumstances, and you had to make a pilgrimage to the temple at certain times of the year to offer particular sacrifices in order to worship God.

So you had to move locations in order to worship God. You couldn't offer sacrifices yourself. You had to go to a priest who is your intermediary between you and God. You had to be at the temple with a priest offering a particular sacrifice in order to worship God, in order to serve God.

And that's not the case anymore in the New Covenant. Jesus has fulfilled all of us, and we don't have a media. The book of Hebrews says there's no mediator between God and man except the man Christ Jesus.

And where is he? What town does he live in? Where do you have to go to talk to him? You can talk to him anywhere. That's profoundly significant. The fact that every believer has access to Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth, at every moment simply by speaking to him in prayer, and that every moment, wherever you are, no matter your job, no matter your condition in life, you're filled with the Spirit.

You're given the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now, here's what I want you to see this in the Bible. I want you to see this. This is really significant, and we're going to look in three different places. The first thing I want you to see is that every Christian is a minister.

Every Christian is a minister. Look to Ephesians, Ephesians 4, verse 12. Ephesians 4, verse 12. In Ephesians, the Apostle Paul is giving instructions to the church. He's writing to them about the importance and the significance of many things.

And in chapter 4, he's talking about unity in the body, and he's talking specifically here in these verses about the role and the place of leadership in the local church. And in chapter 4, verse 12, he says this, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

In verse 11, right before that, he says that this is the role of apostles and prophets and evangelists and shepherds and teachers. The shepherds and the teachers equip who? The saints for what? The work of ministry.

So, I know that I checked this with Pastor Tommy last night, and he said that many of you will be reading the NAS, and I was like, oh, man, I might be making some points that I have to explain a little bit differently.

Does the NAS say the work of ministry or the work of service? Service, that's actually really helpful to my point, because ministry is just a word that doesn't really exist in the Bible. In fact, the word is actually service, so the ESV is not helpful here.

It's the NAS is more helpful. It's the work of service. Your pastor is to equip you. Your elders are to equip you. Your pastors and teachers are to equip you so that you can do the work of the ministry.

There is no such thing as the ministry in the Christian life aside from what every Christian who has the Holy Spirit is called to do 24 -7 every day of every moment of their entire life. They are to do the work of service.

And your pastors and your teachers are to equip you for that work. They're to equip you so that you can do that ministry, do that work of service. Now, here's another important thing. This service, what the ESV translates as ministry, that is the labor and the work of a priest.

That's what a priest does. In the Old Covenant, the priest did the work of sacrifice. The priest did the work of offering. The priest did the work of praying. The priest did the mediating work. In 1 Peter 2, look to 1 Peter 2, flip over to 1 Peter 2.

1 Peter, our brother, the apostle Peter, tells us something very significant about the Christian life. 1 Peter 2, verses 4 and 5, he says this, as you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

That's the purpose for which God in Christ has saved you, is to make you into a royal priesthood so that you would offer sacrifices. And that's the work of ministry. That's that ministry that God has called you to.

It's the ministry of a priest. Now you may think, okay, well, I'm tracking with you here. The apostle Paul says that the pastors are not the ministers. They're not the servants. They're not doing the service.

They're equipping every believer to do the work of ministry, the work of service. Okay, I follow that. And now this work of ministry and the services is what a priest does. And every believer is a priest.

We're all, every Christian, every brother, sister is a priest of the living God. And we're doing this priestly work of ministry and service. I follow that. That means I should attend a program on Monday night at the church building, right?

That's what that service is, right? It means I should be a volunteer in the church functions and be involved. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong at all being involved in church programs.

But that's not what the Bible is talking about. The Bible is actually talking about your entire life, every waking moment. Look at Romans 12 verses 1 and 2. This beginning of chapter 12 in Romans, the apostle Paul is transitioning from making deep, thickly reasoned arguments about who God is and what He is doing and how we're made right with God.

And he's just kind of wrapped up. Well, what's the role of Israel in all of this? I thought they were the people of God. And how should we think about them? So Paul has been making tight arguments all along until Romans chapter 11.

He wraps that up. And in chapter 12, he kind of steps back. He steps back after praising God and all of His glory. I'm actually going to read those verses in verse 33 of chapter 11. This is the summary statement of all of the thick theology of the beginning chapters of Romans.

It culminates with Paul worshiping God and saying, Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and character of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor?

Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen. It's a majestic summary statement that Paul just bursts out in glorious worship after all of this rich theology.

And then he transitions in 12 .1 and he says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God. And this you can rightly translate this in view of God's mercies. He's just painted a landscape, a majestically glorious landscape of all of God's mercies, all of His sovereign mercy.

It's all in view. You're looking at it. You understand all of it. And now that you see all of it in view of God's mercies, I appeal to you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. There it is. That's sacrifice language.

That's what priests do. They make sacrifices. And in the new covenant, because of what Jesus has done, and in the fullness of the Spirit, you, brother and sister, are a priest of the living God. And what kind of sacrifice are you to offer?

Is it a few hours a week on a Wednesday night? Is it participation in an evangelism program? Is it attendance at a Bible study? Is it sharing the gospel once or twice during the work week with a co-worker?

It is those things, but it's way more. It's not just those things. And if you think about the Christian life as a church member, who's not a staff member in the church, or a leader in the church, or a missionary, and you think of your Christian life as the summary of your service to God, and you're cutting out the vast majority of your life, as a priest, making sacrifices, and you ought to think of yourself as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Your body, every moment of every day, is to be lived as a sacrificial offering to God, because you are a priest. You don't offer animals. You don't cut open doves or sacrifice cows at an altar in Jerusalem, located at the temple.

You live every moment. You wake up every day. You offer your whole body, every action, every member, every both arms, you only have two. Your mind, your thoughts, your emotions, everything that you are, is to be lived as a sacrificial offering to God.

Now, that's important. That's important because that's the background. That's the undergirding pillars, the foundation, by which Paul can say, you don't need to change your circumstances. Why would you need to change your circumstances?

Why would you need to change your condition in life? The two examples that he uses in 1 Corinthians 7, if you want to go back there and look specifically, he uses two specific circumstances, and says that these things don't matter.

The first is circumcision. The second is slavery. Those conditions were really, really important in the minds of the believers in Corinth. You can't read through the New Testament without coming across this argument of, should we be circumcised?

Should we not be circumcised? The importance of circumcision in the Old Covenant, you can't overstate the significance of circumcision in the Old Covenant. You guys are in Genesis. You've just gotten through, I think, where you are as you've just talked about the importance of circumcision and the covenant promises.

Massively important. Paul says something that would have gotten him stoned by a Jewish audience here. He says something that's just really, really dismissive and really radical. He says circumcision counts.

How much does it count? Nothing. It doesn't get you in covenant relationship with God. It doesn't gain you standing before the throne of heaven. It accomplishes nothing. Circumcision counts for nothing.

If you were circumcised when God called you, that's fine. You don't have to undo that. If you aren't circumcised when God calls you, that's fine. You don't have to go get circumcised. You don't have to change your condition in order to be a useful priest of the living God.

You don't have to change your condition. The second one is slavery. You can imagine how that question would come up. I don't even have control over my own time. How can I possibly serve God as a slave?

I've got to get out of slavery in order to serve God. This vocation right here, I can't serve God in this vocation. This vocation won't work. Not compatible with kingdom advance. Paul says, no, you don't have to undo it.

If you can undo it, that's really good. You should undo it. But if you can't, you're still useful to God. You don't have to change that condition. That's the first thing. You bring holiness to your surroundings.

You don't have to change your surroundings in order to access holiness. You are the salt and the light of the earth. For you, brothers and sisters, it is no longer do not taste, do not touch. That's the old covenant way of holiness.

But Jesus has changed everything. In the old covenant, you were defiled by being in a certain place, at a certain time, touching a certain thing. But now, just like Jesus in Luke 8, where he was in a crowd and jostling around.

And the woman who had an issue of blood, the physicians couldn't heal her. No one could heal her. She thought that Jesus could heal her. And she reached out in the crowd and she touched Jesus. And what happened was Jesus was defiled, right?

No, he wasn't defiled. He felt power come out of him and the woman was healed. He was the one who was contagious to her. Her unholiness was not contagious to him. His holiness was contagious. We're all familiar with contagious language now, right?

If we weren't before, we definitely are now. This is really significant. That where you go as a priest of the living God, you bring holiness there. You bring the presence of God there. You are a representative of truth there.

You are no longer affected by the unholiness that surrounds you. You bring the effect of holiness to those around you. Just in the verses preceding this in 1 Corinthians 7, it's the believing spouse that makes the unbelieving spouse holy.

It's the same principle at work. You don't have to change your marriage condition in order to serve God. You don't have to unhitch from the unbelieving spouse. That was the question is, how can I serve the Lord if my spouse doesn't believe?

That seems like something that would drag me down. I said, no, don't divorce your wife just because she's not... Don't divorce your husband because they're not a believer. You make them holy. You can ask Pastor Tommy what that means later.

But the principle that I want you to see is that who's contagious? The priest of God is contagious. They bring holiness. They bring salt. They bring light. And you, when you're called by God in whatever vocation, whatever condition, God calls you there and wants you to remain there so that you bring salt and light exactly where you are.

The new life is the life that is doing the contagious affecting. The unbelievers are affected by the believers. Now, here's an illustration of this. In this passage, we're talking about circumcision and we're talking about slavery.

Those aren't really a lot of conversations for us. We're not thickly involved in the Jew-Gentile divide here in Newton, Conover, North Carolina. Newton, Conover, North Carolina was probably heavily involved in the conversation about slavery generations ago.

Not really right now. We're not having to wrestle with, I'm a slave. What do I do in following Christ? But we do wrestle with vocation in following Christ. That's, in my experience, that's where we have the most common conversations.

The story of this is a friend of mine in Louisville who was dramatically converted. He was a heroin addict and just a good-for-nothing young man who was converted. And he recovered from his heroin addiction and he began to grow in the knowledge of the gospel.

And I was meeting with him regularly. We were studying the Bible. He was increasingly understanding theology. He was growing more and more in love with the gospel and the church and living faithfully.

He was repenting of different things that he has done. He was paying back money that he owed to former employers that he'd stolen from. And he was surrounded by people in Louisville who went to Bible college and seminary.

And he got this idea, as a new believer, that, man, if I want to be a real, mature, solid Christian, I should probably go to Bible college and seminary, right? And that's a fine thing for some people to do.

It's a very fine thing for some people to do. But it's not the default path of growth and grace for every Christian. And for this brother, I told him, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He wasn't going because he wanted...

He was going out of a sense that that was the default pathway for Christians. You had to change your condition. You had to go move to a different town. You had to go attend this school or this institution in order to gain this kind of knowledge that's only accessible there if you're going to be a believer.

That's fundamentally counter to what Paul is teaching here in 1 Corinthians. It's like, you don't have to change your condition in order to be a servant of the Lord. You don't have to change that condition.

And I think that at some level, when I was a teenager, I got this vibe from church life that, man, if I really wanted to be as a believer as a teenager, if I really wanted to be useful to the kingdom, I'll be a pastor or a church planner.

That's what's really useful. But Paul tells us that whatever condition you are when you were called, you should stay there. That's the second phrase that I want to see. We spent some time thinking about whatever condition.

And then Paul says, each was called. The verse again, whatever condition each was called, let him there remain with God. What is calling? What is he talking about here when he says calling? This one can be a little bit tricky because Paul uses that word in a couple of different ways in this short section.

The first way that he uses it, he means you're calling as a Christian. So first Corinthians seven, verse 17, only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him.

This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. You can go through and see all the times call is mentioned.

It's mentioned in verse 20, verse 20. Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. Verse 21, were you a slave when called? Verse 22, for he who has been called in the Lord as a slave.

So this he's talking about here, he's talking about a calling as a Christian. The fact that God calls those who come to faith in Jesus. Apart from this call of God, no one comes to faith in the gospel.

No one, no one is interested in it. No one understands it. Everyone has deaf ears to it. But God in his sovereign mercy makes certain people alive to hear this call. And he calls them to himself through Jesus.

And when God calls people, they fall in love with Jesus. And they are enraptured with the gospel of the kingdom. And they want to give themselves to its advance. That's the that's the calling that Paul is talking about primarily here.

This is the calling that he's referring to in Romans 1 .6. Turn there. Romans 1 .6 says, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. No, Romans 8 .28. Sorry, that one's a good one too.

Romans 8 .28, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. This, this in the New Testament is the call that God places on people in order for them to follow after Jesus.

But Paul uses that language in another way as well. In 1 Corinthians 7, verse 17, he uses it to indicate that God has a call on you for your vocation, your position, your condition in life. That God, God doesn't just call you to Jesus Christ.

He calls you to a task. Verse 17 of 1 Corinthians 7, only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned, assigned to him. What does the N .A .S. say for that? Assigned. So it says assigned.

That's good. Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him. You see how he's using those terms assigned and called? Pretty much similarly. God has assigned you to something and he's called you to that something.

Now, now this is, this is the doctrine of vocation. It's actually really appropriate for us to be looking at this passage at this time of year, the end of October. If you're not very familiar with the Reformation and the significance of the Reformation, Martin Luther recovered this doctrine of vocation in the Christian life.

And what he did is he restored the dignity and the holiness of what every Christian does in their everyday work life. And he emphasized this reality that God calls Christians to do all kinds of things.

And this was, this is, this is not how I grew up. This is not how I grew up. I grew up thinking that if you got a call from God, it was to sacred work and not secular work. And then, you know, if you don't have a call from God to be a pastor or church planner, then you just kind of figure out what you want to do with your time, what you love to do.

You kind of follow the advice of those around you. If you, if you do something you love, you'll never work a day in your life. You know, you've probably heard that. You're, you're finding out what your career will be.

But that search for a career involved a lot of advice. It involved a lot of thinking. It involved a lot of planning. But for me, it didn't involve a lot of what does God want me to do? Because that was just kind of, that was, that was secular stuff.

If I was asking what God wants me to do, I was thinking about missions or church work or church staff. That was the sacred stuff. But this is not how 1 Corinthians 7 would have us think about calling.

Yes, God calls you as a Christian, but he calls you, he calls you into a line of work. He equips you for that work. He's the one who's knit you together to give you propensities or desires for certain kinds of work.