|
Return to Table of Contents
Determining the Call of God
Return to "Reclaiming Your Call to the Ministry"
How can you determine whether you are called of God to lifetime ministry? You must ask the following three specific and simple questions.
Are you called to serve?
Am I called to serve the Lord? If you are saved, you are called to serve the Lord. That is the purpose of our salvation.
I have often said, "You should never quote Ephesians 2:8,9 without quoting verse 10." Verses 8 and 9 tell us how we are saved; verse 10 tells us why.
We are not saved to sit, soak, and sour; we are saved to serve, and if we fall to do so, we frustrate God’s purpose in giving us life on this earth.
How are you called to serve?
How am I called to serve the Lord? This is where the specificity of God’s call enters the picture. If you are a believer and are called to serve the Lord, how will you do it? Romans 12 provides the answer.
After those two important "living sacrifice" verses, Paul says, "For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us . . ." (Romans 12:4–6).
How are you to serve the Lord? As God has gifted you, that’s how. God gifts His children for particular service. If a pastor sees a young man in his church who is gifted for ministry, what right does that pastor have to send him to the state university to major in computer science? I believe he or she has no right at all.
God does not call us to a specific ministry and then not gift us for that ministry. But conversely, God does not gift us for a specific ministry and then not call us to it. God doesn’t waste His gifts.
Does this mean there is no definite call of God on a person’s life? Not at all. The call of God is specific; it is supernatural. But it is rarely sudden; it is rarely spectacular. The call of God most frequently comes to a yielded and tender spirit and is spiritually discerned, not spectacularly displayed.
Where are you called to serve?
Where do I serve the Lord? This is the most difficult question of all. Again we must rely on the gentle leading of the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit of God does not work in a vacuum, and at this point serious servants gather all of the material they can about the needs of the world and how their spiritual gifts can meet those needs. Serious servants who need training in the Word gather all of the catalogs they can of institutions that have a strong program in Bible and ministry skills. Serious servants do not choose a college curriculum that will teach them how to serve only mankind. Serious servants choose a college curriculum that will teach them how to be used of God to save mankind.
The devil has been incredibly successful in diverting men and women from lifetime service to the Lord just by confusing them about the call of God. I have always heard that if you can do anything other than preach, you should never aspire to preach the Word. Although I understand this thinking, it does not seem to me we have great numbers of men and women in evangelical pulpits today who do not belong there. But it does seem we have great numbers of men and women in evangelical congregations today who belong in pulpits. Are not the laborers few? Does that mean God has incorrectly calculated how many pastors and missionaries He needs? I don’t think so.
God’s gentle prodding
Certainly nothing is wrong with one being a plumber, a pipe fitter, or a postal employee. This world needs all of these occupations, and you can enjoy any of them and use your gifts for God at the same time. But if you think you are gifted to preach the Word, if you see the desperate need for preachers, and if you feel that gentle tug from the Holy Spirit to exercise your gifts in a way that better serves eternity, for what are you waiting? Throw down that plunger, pipe, or Publisher’s Clearing House envelope, and pick up the powerful and living Word of God.
If the blitzkrieg call were necessary for ministry, most of us would be in another line of work today. It isn’t necessary. In fact, it isn’t characteristic of the way God works in the lives of men and women to convince them of lifetime service. Listen to His gentle prodding, hear His still, small voice; examine your gifts; and assume that He wants you in lifetime ministry. When you step out in faith, He will confirm His call. You’ll know.
—Excerpted from The Vanishing Ministry in the 21st Century by Woodrow Kroll (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publishing, 2002), 70–73. Used with permission.
|
