This year marks my 20th anniversary of answering
God’s call to ministry, so as an exercise of ‘recalling’ that experience, I
have been studying and meditating on the many ways God’s people have heard
God’s voice over the years. Both in scripture as well as in modern times, people
have answered The Lord’s calling to serve Him in this world as ambassadors for
a heavenly kingdom. While God speaks to everyone differently, according to
their unique design, I have attempted to categorize the different ways people
have heard from God so that a new generation of Christ followers can hone their
listening skills to hear His voice.
Just to demonstrate a stark contrast in the way God has
called his people in scripture, consider the different callings of Moses, David,
Esther and Paul:
The call of Moses
– Exodus 3:2-10
And
the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a
bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And
Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not
burned.” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out
of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Do not
come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are
standing is holy ground.” And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for
he was afraid to look at God. Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the
affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of
their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver
them out of the hand of the Egyptians… Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that
you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
Later, in Exodus 33:11, scripture
says, “The Lord would speak to Moses face
to face, as one speaks to a friend.”
The call of David
- I Samuel 16:1-13
The
Lord said to Samuel… “Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse
the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons… And you
shall anoint for me him whom I declare to you… Do not look on his appearance or
on the height of his stature… For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on
the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart… And Jesse made seven
of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not
chosen these.” Then Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he
said, “There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep.”
And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and get him, for we will not sit down till he
comes here.” And he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy and had beautiful
eyes and was handsome. And the Lord said, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.”
Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers.
And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward.
The call of Esther
– Esther 4:13-14
Then
Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the
king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep
silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another
place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you
have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
The call of Paul
– Acts 13:1-3
Now
there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who
was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the
tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy
Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have
called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and
sent them off.
These four call experiences from scripture highlight some of
the many ways in which the Lord interacts with His people. Moses heard from God
directly, with no intermediary. David was anointed through a prophet of the
Lord. Esther was placed by God into a circumstance where only she could be His
vessel to accomplish His purposes.
In this one instance, Paul was called out and sent by a body
of leaders from the church. However, he also had other interactions with God
through visions and dreams (Acts 18:9), through the person of Ananias (Acts 9),
and by direct revelation from Jesus Christ (Galatians 1:12).
Theologians like to put the call of God into two neat and
tidy categories: general revelation and special revelation (see Erickson, Christian Theology P.175-198,
1993). For the purposes of this
exercise, I have decided to broaden these terms to understand calling in a more
practical way and to help a new generation of church leaders and missionaries
hear the voice of God as He calls them to serve.
Types of call experiences:
1.
Invitational
– Jesus was walking by men at work on the sea and invited them to “Follow Me”.
Those men became His “disciples”, meaning followers, learners, students,
protégés or mentees. Today, there are
pastors, retired missionaries, and church leaders who can look around their
congregations and, through the prompting of the Holy Spirit, invite people to
step up and serve alongside them in some way. They could say, “I sense God
moving in your life and I would like to invite you to join me in serving the
Lord.” This begins a mentoring relationship that will guide and shape the
future direction of the follower. Steve Harling, President of ReachBeyond
(formerly HCJB) preached a sermon one time on mentoring and described the
“Three Gifts of a Mentor”:
a.
Affirmation – “You are really good at
this. You have a gift”
b.
Inspiration – “I saw you do this and
I want you to continue and grow in it”
c.
Elevation – “Here is your opportunity
and I’m getting out of your way”
2.
Scriptural
– Some of the ascetics, like Richard Foster and Dallas Willard, will emphasize
that when someone engages in spiritual disciplines like prayer, reading
scripture, meditation and solitude, people open their hearts up to hearing a
message from God. “Specifically, in our
attempts to understand how God speaks to us and guides us we must, above all,
hold on to the fact that learning how to hear God is to be sought only as a
part of a certain kind of life, a life of loving fellowship with the King and
his other subjects within the kingdom of the heavens.” (Willard: Hearing
God, p. 39) “Christian meditation, very
simply, is the ability to hear God’s voice and obey his word.” (Foster:
Celebration of Discipline, p. 17) While reading through scripture, some
believers will sense God’s prompting, either by reading something like the
Great Commission in Matthew 28 or by praying from Luke 10:2 “Pray to the Lord
of the harvest to send out laborers.” They will accept this as God speaking
directly to them and thereby accept His call to serve.
3.
Supernatural
– I realize that just by including this category, I have excluded myself from
many evangelical social events, and have just been labeled a Pentecostal /
Charismatic / “Strange Fire” neophyte. Personally, I have not experienced the
miraculous, but I believe that others have. Even though I have not seen a
miracle, I still believe that God can (and does) work in supernatural ways.
This portion of my blog may not be acceptable for the “Friendly Fire”
conference (oops, I mean “Strange Fire”), but please don’t throw the baby out
with the bathwater. Yes, there are abuses that take place in every arena of
Christianity (including cessationism as well as continuationism), but I implore
you to leave your mind open to the possibility that God could choose to use
dreams, visions, miraculous signs and even an occasional burning bush to call
His people into His harvest.
4.
Experiential
– Early in my walk with Christ, I was exposed to the writings of Henry Blackaby
and his work “Experiencing God”. After fifteen weeks of in-depth study, I
walked away with the summation that we should be ‘reading the signs’ that God
is giving to us. When we do this, we will see where God is working and be
compelled to join Him. This has been my favorite part of the faith journey as a
pastor and as a mobilizer for missionaries. In those times of confusion, where
I begin to wonder what the Lord is doing, this simple yet profound teaching has
always taken me to a new depth of understanding God. The gift of being able to
look around with my five ‘temporal’ senses, and discover an eternal
perspective, requires intentionality, determination, and will-power, but the
reward is a greater connection with our creator.
5.
Affirmational
– There are times when people have come to me and said, “Dave, I want to serve
the Lord, but I don’t know what He wants me to do or where He wants me to go.”
At those moments, unless I have a specific prompting from the Lord, I take a
phrase from Alcoholics Anonymous and say “Just do the next right thing.” If the
Lord affirms that, then keep doing it. If not, stop it, then “Just do the next
right thing, again.” (Wash, Rinse, Repeat) At some point, the Lord will make
His will clear if you put your trust in Him. “Trust in the Lord with all your
heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge
him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5)
6.
Personal
– What is your story? There are numerous occupational style assessment tools
available that take into consideration your spiritual gifts, background and
experiences, recurring themes in your life, your passions, desires and abilities.
It may be as simple as your love for accounting which is pre-wired in your
heart for the purpose of managing the books for a missionary sending agency.
Recently, a Psychology student mentioned to me that he was sensing God calling
him to be a missionary, but he was almost finished with his graduate degree. He
asked, “Why would God call me to be a missionary, when I am training to be a
therapist?” I shared with him that missionaries have strained relationships,
unhealthy marriages and have traumatic experiences just like everyone else.
There is a specialty in the mission world called “Member Care” and we need
people with a psychological background to provide care for front-line workers.
So, what is your story?
7.
Circumstantial
– The book of Esther is unique in many ways, but one difference from all the
other books of the Bible, is that God is never mentioned. Of course, He is
assumed, but there is not the typical appearance nor interaction of a Creator
with His creation. Queen Esther is the heroine, not because of her obedience to
the Lord, but because she was in a certain place, at a certain time, when she
was the only person who could affect an outcome. Her uncle Mordecai proclaims
his faith by saying “…if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance
will rise for the Jews from another place”. By this, he is proclaiming that
God’s purposes will be accomplished, regardless of who makes it happen, thereby
describing both free-will at the same time understanding the determinism of
God’s will.
These categories are not meant to be exclusive or exhaustive,
but they should serve as a starting place for your quest to hear God’s voice as
He is calling you into His harvest. The important thing to consider is if
you’ll be obedient to Him and surrender your will to His will. Generally
speaking, God’s calling is not always comfortable. Consider the four examples
from scripture given above:
Moses resisted God at first and Exodus 4:14 states that “Then
the Lord’s anger burned against Moses…” because he kept coming up with excuses
to not do what the Lord was calling him to do.
David was the least likely to succeed in his family. He was
the small, ruddy, shepherd boy and was not even considered an option by his
family when the brothers were lining up to be seen by the prophet of God. The
Lord even prepared Samuel ahead of time by saying, “For the Lord sees not as
man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the
heart.”
If Esther had not accepted this responsibility, then the
story would have been the same, but the name of this book would be ‘Deborah, or
‘Elizabeth’, or ‘Hannah” or someone else other than Esther. Praise God for
Esther, but I wonder if there was someone else who did not step up to the
challenge “for such a time as this”.
It took Paul seventeen years of preparation to go from being
a persecutor of the church to serving as a carrier of Christ’s message to the
gentiles. We do not have the ability to fully comprehend the significance of
how a “Pharisee of Pharisees” would feel about being called by God to serve the
“gentile dogs”, but it may be similar to a neo-nazi skinhead being called to
serve the multi-ethnic communities of Manhattan’s lower east-side or
south-central Los Angeles.
Even though someone may experience a call to full-time
ministry or missionary service, there still needs to be some checks and
balances in affirming the call. God created us to be social beings and to be
held accountable by each other. Because of this, there are some authority
issues that should be considered based on one’s ecclesiology. For the sake of
simplicity, here are four basic sources of authority to consider in affirming
the call of an individual and the assumption of responsibility by mission/ministry
leaders:
1.
Scripture
– Evangelical / Protestant traditions will raise scripture to the position of
highest authority in the matter of any issue regarding faith or practice. The
call of God must fit within the parameters of “what the Bible says”. This would
include Baptists and other Evangelicals.
2.
Counsel
/ Elders – in the Presbyterian form of church governance, they place
authority in the office of a representative body (or Elders). These delegate
officials make decisions and approve any appointment based on their corporate
understanding of God’s divine will (the group must agree). This would include
the Presbyterian church and the Reformed church.
3.
A
person – In the episcopal form of church governance, the Bishop,
Priest or Pope is the ultimate authority and His decisions can override
previous decisions as well as scripture itself.
The Catholic church and the Episcopal church are examples.
4.
The
Holy Spirit – Charismatics and Pentecostals rely
heavily on spiritual inspiration, intuition, emotional awareness and
supernatural stimulation. In this category, there are many types of churches,
but I would also include the Quakers who emphasize the “inner light” as well as
the Plymouth Brethren who avoid any organization, while fully trusting in the
Holy Spirit as a ruling force.
As you can see, the question of authority can vary greatly
from one church, denomination or organization. It would be a very important and
valuable conversation to have with your church leaders, for anyone who is
sensing God’s call to full time ministry or missionary service.
Another important consideration is equipping. It has been
said that “God does not call the equipped, but he equips the called.”
Sometimes, the Lord uses people in ways that are outside of their comfort zones,
so that He can demonstrate His power. Moses had a speech impediment, so how could
he speak with authority to crowds and to kings? David was a shepherd boy from a
working class family, so how could he be a king? Esther was breaking all the
rules by approaching the king without being summoned first. Paul had a thorn in
the flesh, yet he understood that the Lord was ultimately in charge of the
outcome when he said:
“But the Lord said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more
gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why,
for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in
persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Most serious mission leaders find it difficult to separate
‘the call to missionary service’ from ‘the call to suffer for the cause of
Christ’. Suffering is a part of the job description for missionaries on the
field. Consider the one aspect of this calling is to leave your friends,
family, culture, language and the day-to-day sense of normalcy, and move to a
place where you do not know the people, the cultural nuances, the ways of
thinking, and the local expectations. This scenario is wrought with potential
suffering before the adventure even begins. This is particularly relevant for
those who choose to make their new home in a land that is hostile to their
message.
Anyone who considers a call to the ministry or missionary
service should at least know what Tertullian said in “Apology”
Go
zealously on, good presidents! You will stand higher with the people if you
sacrifice us, kill us, torture us, condemn us and grind us to dust, as they
demand. Your injustice is the proof that we are innocent. That is why God
allows us to suffer… Your cruelty, however great, is no benefit to you, however
it serves as an attraction to our sect. The more we are mown down by you, the
more we grow. The blood of Christians is seed of a new life.
So, have you heard God’s voice? Do you sense that He is
calling you to serve Him in His harvest? Are you willing to obey? Is there
something you feel led to do, but you don’t feel like you are capable? Trust
Him today and He will guide you tomorrow.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on
your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make
your paths straight. – Proverbs 3:5
Question for discussion and thought:
What is the difference between Call
and Clarity?
Is Clarity “to this place” and “for
this purpose”?
