The Call to Service (Part 2)

All that to come back to this call to service. So this may be fluid, operating at varying levels, open to varying assignments from God, which makes sense. God may call us to serve Him in certain ways at this time and in other ways at this time. In this job in this way, that job in another way. So location can be fluid, vocation can be fluid. That’s where call to salvation, call to mission, unchanging. Call to service can change.

Your Call to Service Can Change

What must be constant in our life, however, is faithfulness to God’s call no matter what the cost, until God calls us to different service. So that’s what we want, to be faithful to wherever He’s called us until He leads us somewhere else. So how do we know when He’s leading us somewhere else or how do we know when He’s leading us to do this or that and this place or that place and this job or that job? Call to service are discerned and affirmed not just individually but as a member of the church on mission in the world.

So this is why it’s one of the things I love about Acts 13, the spirit called Paul and Barnabas to do this, but he was affirming that through the church around them. In Acts 20, as they were wrestling together as the church about whether or not Paul should go to Jerusalem, this is one of the reasons why in the call to station we’ve got to remember we’re members of a local church, because God has not called us to make decisions like this in isolation.

We’re intended to have brothers and sisters around us in our lives who help us think through. So the way we spell it out in this definition is through spirit-led, Word-driven, prayer-saturated examination of a disciple’s, desires, gifts, abilities, and opportunities. So how do we know what the Lord’s leading us to do? We spend time in His Word, abiding in His Word, praying Lord, lead me, guide me, direct me, trusting His spirit to do that in the context of community, then thinking through issues like desires.

What Are Your Gifts?

Do you have a desire to do that? Gifts, do you have gifts to do that? Abilities? So is there education, training, experience, expertise that leads you to that? Opportunities, is the opportunity there for you to do that? So let me kind of put all this together again just for my own personal story. So almost three years ago, pastoring a local church and like I mentioned, loving pastoring that church, but was on a trip in the mountains of Asia and the Lord started doing a work in my heart that I could sense. And maybe He was preparing me for something different and just causing me in a fresh way… The way I would describe it, from Romans 15, just a narrowing ambition to see Christ preached where He has not been named as I just walk through village after village that had never heard the name of Christ.

So I started thinking maybe the Lord’s going to lead us to move to this part of Asia, and so I start thinking through all the questions my wife is going to ask me when I get home and I tell her we’re moving to this part of Asia. And so I started asking all those questions of the guys who lived there. I come back and I’m thinking maybe that’s it and so I share that with my wife and we start praying through that possibility. Well, along the way also the former president of the IMB steps down and says he’s praying for somebody else to step into this role. And after a while, as I’m praying through whether or not I need to stay pastor in the Church at Brook Hills or moved to Asia, then the IMB called and said, “Hey, would you be willing to consider stepping into this other role?”

And so that’s one other thing on the table. So I’ve got three things on the table and I am going before the Lord, just saying, “Lord, I’ll gladly do any of those, or if you want to put a fourth out there that you’d like me to do, I want to follow your will.” So what I did is I shared that with the church around me, specifically the elders of the church where I was serving and said, “I need you guys to pray with me.”

We had close friends that we sought for council and we said, “Here’s the things that are on the table, help us discern.” And so looking at desires, gifts, abilities, opportunity, start praying through that, and over the course of months of in the Word, prayer and fasting came to the conclusion. And first in my own heart, I think the Lord may be leading me to go to the IMB, and my wife started to sense the same thing. And then we said, “Well, if that’s true, Lord, make that clear among the elders of the church. We’re praying through this together.”

And one of the elders, the same day I wrote in my journal, “I think the Lord may be leading us to go,” that elder emails me and says, “I think the Lord may be leading you to go as much as I don’t want to say that.” And so spending time with those brothers, and then there was a whole team at the IMB who was praying through who might lead and talking to different people.

And so I realized, well, I mean I could think the Lord’s leading me to go and the church could think the Lord’s leading me to go, but if they don’t think the Lord’s leading me to go, then I’m not going. So they ended up coming and saying, “Hey, we think the Lord’s leading you to come to this role.” And so it was a six-month process of I trust spirit-led, Word-driven, prayer-focused examination of disciples, desires, gifts, abilities, and opportunities that led me to the painful decision at that point to say, “I believe the Lord’s leading me to leave this church to go into this role.”

So I look back at that experience and I think, “Well, it kind of would’ve been nice if just in the very beginning of that six months I just had a vision, and I went to bed one night and had a dream and the Lord said, ‘Hey, you need to go to the IMB.’ That feels like it’d been a lot easier to discern that calling.” But the Lord didn’t do that and here’s why I’m glad He didn’t.

He did something so much better. Instead of just giving a vision, which I mean He might do in any one of our lives. He certainly did in Paul’s life, and that’s great. But instead there was a whole process whereby six months, I mean every single day I’m just seeking Him, praying, “Lord, please show me, please show me.” Fasting, in His word, just asking Him for guidance, having conversations with his church, and through that process I grew to love the Lord far more at the end of that six months than I did at the beginning of that six months.

Build A Deeper Relationship With God

And I began to realize, well, wait a second, the whole point was not just getting an answer about whether or not I should do this. The whole point was deeper knowledge of God and deeper relationship with God. And that’s the beauty that I want to remind you of when it comes to calling and calling to service specifically, when we’re seeking Him, all it does, and wanting to discern how He’s leading us in these ways, ultimately what it does is it strengthens our call to salvation in Christ. It reminds us that He holds us in the palm of His hand. He will lead and guide and direct us according to His good and sovereign plan. And wherever we are we need to be making disciples on mission, and we need to do that as faithful sons, daughters, husbands, wives, moms, dads, whatever, singles, whatever it looks like. And then may God lead and guide and direct us.

Allow God To Lead You

So that’s just overflow from my life. Here’s what I would encourage you with, when you think about calling to service in different ways I would just give you three words, surrender, abide, and rest. So the first word, surrender. When it comes to service, just surrender. You’re in Christ. Call to mission, surrender your life. Put a blank check on the table with your life and just say to God, “God, wherever you want me to lead me, I’ll go. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it.”

So no strings attached, blank check. Lord, you direct, you lead, you guide me, lead, guide my family, whatever you want us to do. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. This is what it means again to be a Christian, to live in that kind of surrender. So start there. If you are starting by putting conditions upon obedience to God, then you’re missing the whole point of what it means to be in Christ much less to follow His call to service.

We’ve got to be open to whatever He may lead you to do. So start there with surrender. Then second, abide,m as you surrender to him abide in Him. Just day after day after day be in His Word in prayer, seeking Him, obeying Him, making disciples right where He’s put you. Not always thinking, “Well, has the Lord called me to do this or that? Well, start by being faithful right where He’s put you. And then trust that He’s going to lead, He’s going to guide. So that’s where surrender, abide, obey… So my dad used to always say, “When you don’t know what to do, do the things you know to do.” So when you don’t know where God’s leading you in this way or that way, obey in what you know He is leading you to do, so surrender, abide. And then the third word is rest.

I’m just convinced when we’re surrendered to Christ and we’re abiding in Christ, seeking Him every day, walking in step with His spirit. He’s not going to lead or guide us off the path. He’s going to lead or guide us in His path. We can rest in the fact that He is going to direct our paths. Trust the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him, abide in Him and He will make your path straight. We have a good Father who desires His will to be accomplished in our life more than we do. He desires His will to be accomplished in our life so much that He’s put His very Spirit inside of us to lead and guide us and direct us. He doesn’t just tell us where to go. He puts His Spirit inside of us to guide and lead and direct our thinking and our desiring and our path.

Rest In God

So rest in Him. Rest that the Father in heaven, in His sovereignty, will lead and guide us according to His goodwill, for our good and then ultimately for His glory. And in this way, you put it all together, God’s call to salvation, mission, station, and then service, just bring strength and comfort to persevere, especially when in the middle of whatever we’re facing in life. We face discouragement, doubt, trial, trouble, pressure, persecution, whatever it might be. No, you are in Christ on mission in the world in these stations He’s called you to. And whatever areas of service and whatever difficulties that brings, you can know that God is working all these things together for the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose. Let’s pray.

God, we thank you for the way you call us to yourself through Christ. Thank you for the way you’ve called each of us to be your sons, your daughters, and the security we find in you. So we pray that you help us to live with that security. Help us to live in obedience through calling to mission, calling to specific stations you’ve put us in. And then please, oh God, help us to discern the leadership of your Spirit as we seek you, abide in you. Help us to follow the leadership of your Spirit when it comes to the different ways you call us to serve you on mission. And we pray that you would lead, guide, and direct our steps in a way that is good for us, it’s good for the spread of the gospel, and ultimately is glorifying to your name. Thank you for the way you lead, guide, and call us. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen