Wrestling With The Call To Ministry. A Journey.
There are many questions as a man begins to discern if the leaning of the Holy Spirit into his life is real relating to engaging in ministry. One of the very first examples of a man questioning if he was truly chosen by God was Moses. In Exodus chapter 3, Moses encountered God upfront and personal when the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire within a bush. Please realize you and I most likely may not hear the audible voice of God, but Moses certainly experienced it. “When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called out to him from the bush, “Moses, Moses!” (Exod 3:4 Christian Standard Bible) Can you imagine that moment? Moses must definitely have felt a variety of emotions hearing the audible voice of the Lord, and he answered. “Here I am.” Obviously, our encounter with the Holy Spirit may pale compared to Moses encounter with God, yet the commonality is they are both supernatural in effect.
Dave Harvey in his book, Am I called?, shared that a call isn’t theoretical, it is personal. It has been the same throughout the ages from Abraham to Noah, Moses to Joshua, David to Solomon, Elijah to Elisha and into the New Testament from John the Baptist, all the disciples including the Apostle Paul to John the Revelator and now to men in our modern age. You may not have the impact of Martin Luther, William Tyndale, John Calvin, John Knox or the likes of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, Billy Sunday or Billy Graham. However, if God is truly calling you it is to fulfill his purpose in this moment in time, no matter what may seem trivial to man is significant to God. Jim Eliot along with four others were martyred in 1956 on a mission to Ecuador to reach a people group who did not Jesus, yet the impact these men have had to inspire their own families and countless others to mission work is incalculable. There are men of God all over our world at this moment who maybe nameless never to have their name printed in men’s history books, yet known by name by our Heavenly Father. Why share all this with you is to realize a call to ministry isn’t about glamour and prestige, but something of necessity for God to fulfill his plan and purpose.
God had a purpose for Moses, and his plan was for him to lead the Israelites from bondage to the Promised Land. Moses asked God who am I to go to Pharaoh and ask to release the Israelites. God answered him: “I will certainly be with you” (Exod 3:12). This Scripture is a prompt to realize the promise of God that he would be with Moses, and he is also with every person who loves and trusts him. This is why prayer is to be esteemed with high importance as one considers his call to ministry to realize through the process of discernment God is always with a man and he will provide the answer. Harvey wrote about the process of discernment: “This process is an adventure – one that gets pretty serious and requires desperate prayer.”[i] The gospel writers documented numerous times about the prayer life of Jesus and how he demonstrated a genuine love for God in knowing the Father was always with him. As a man discerns God’s plan for his life, like Jesus, he must realize God is with him and to be reminded of the Scripture, “And if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer” (Matt 21:22).
As one walks along the path of discernment in his journey to unearth God’s direction for his life, humility and obedience is essential. Moses questioned his personal abilities and asked God to send someone else. (Exodus 4:10-13). What is central to understanding your capabilities through God’s eyes is to realize he does not call the equipped, he equips the called! Paul proclaims this mystery in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5.
[i] Dave Harvey, Am I Called?, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2012) 26.
