Audio Transcript
We spend our best years, our best decades, at work. And given the investment of life, we desperately want to believe that all that effort, all that daily grind, matters in the end. But secretly, most of us are asking, “Am I wasting my life? Is the work I’m doing truly what God intended? Maybe there’s something better for me. God, send me a sign to know what to do!” Today on Ask Pastor John: stop waiting for a sign.
As we read Romans 12 together, Sarah in Atlanta writes in with this question about ministry: “Pastor John, I am 25 and wrestling with this whole missions calling thing. Some at my church are pushing this idea, saying if you’re not planning to be a missionary, you better have a clear calling to remain in America. But honestly, this doesn’t sit right with me biblically. It seems to flip the normal pattern of calling on its head. I mean, don’t we usually see God specifically calling people to ministry roles rather than assuming everyone should do them by default? How do I think about this biblically? Should I really be planning to pack my bags for overseas missions unless I get some supernatural stop sign from God? Or is there a more balanced way to discern whether God is actually calling me to missions work specifically?” Here’s what Pastor John said to a similar question in 2015.
A student just asked me two days ago whether I agreed with Hudson Taylor’s comment that no one needs a call to go into missions but only a call to stay. Everyone should be planning to go to the unreached peoples, and then God may stop you and call you to stay. And I said to the student, “I don’t agree with that. I don’t think that’s the biblical pattern. It may have some things to commend it in terms of compassion and proportion, and we should listen to those things, but biblically, I can’t support it.”
Regularly, God called his prophets, not the other way around. And God does not say that men should all plan to be pastors unless they’re called not to be pastors or elders. Rather, he sets up patterns of assessment and assumes that relatively few — just the needed number — will be led into the office of pastor, teacher, elder, shepherd. Paul writes to the Romans to solicit their support in his mission to Spain. And he doesn’t say a word about anyone in Rome going with him (Romans 15:23–24). And all the Epistles of the New Testament are written with the explicit (or implicit) assumption that people stay right where they are, salt and light in their present vocations, like Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7:20 (“Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called”). So, that’s the right question. That was my point. Glenn is asking the right question.
Not Conformed But Renewed
Let’s start with Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Discerning the will of God assumes a renewed mind. I am assuming that the will of God here does not refer to commandments of Scripture, which you don’t need a renewed mind to read and know, like “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13). You don’t need a renewed mind to know that’s against the will of God. I’m assuming that what Paul is talking about in Romans 12:2 is this: How do biblical teachings and all the other relevant factors conspire to produce a direction for my life that God approves and will bless?
Which leads now to a second thing: That renewal comes mainly through the word of God and prayer. So, when it says, “Be renewed in your mind,” I think he means “soak your mind, marinate your mind, saturate your mind with the word of God.” The Christian mind is shaped by the word of God, all the while praying, praying, praying, “O God, shape me; O God, make me; O God, bring me into conformity to this word at the depths of my being.”
Seven Ways to Discern
Now, out of that renewed mind and that prayerful experience, what the mind does to discern a call to missions is to take seriously seven things.
1. Spiritual Gifting
The renewed mind takes seriously your spiritual gifts. What are they? God is not calling you to do something he has not gifted you to do. What’s the gifting? And I think the gifting that Paul and Peter have in mind is summed up in 1 Peter 4:10: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” That’s what gifts are: varied grace incarnate in human personalities, which we steward for the good of others. Do you know how God is gifting you in this way?
2. Heart for Needs
The renewed mind takes seriously the needs that you see in the world and the ones that move you most deeply. I wonder if we have thought enough about the implications of what Paul says in Romans 12:6–8 when he’s talking about gifts. He says, “The one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness” (Romans 12:8).
“The Christian mind is shaped by the word of God, all the while praying, praying, praying.”
Now, every Christian is supposed to exhort, every Christian is supposed to be generous, and every Christian is supposed to show mercy. And yet, Paul treats those three things as gifts. And it seems to me that this would imply that some people would study a cluster of needs in the world — a people group, a crisis situation — and a very special, God-given compassion or mercy or generosity or bent to give would be imparted to that person, and it would constitute a very significant component of a person’s calling.
So, take seriously not just the objective, real needs that you are looking at in the world, in the lostness and the hurt of people, but how do those needs affect you? How does it affect you? And then study that in relation to Romans 12:8, where one who does acts of mercy is to do it with cheerfulness, as though there is some special mercifulness that God gives to some people and some special compassion that he gives to some people for missions.
3. Practical Skills
The renewed mind takes seriously its skills. And by this I’m not thinking mainly of spiritual gifts — and they may overlap — but practical skills that God may put to use in a special way in some context, like with finances or carpentry or organization or dozens of possible abilities that may flourish in an especially helpful way on the mission field.
4. Growing Interest
The renewed mind takes seriously recurrent and growing interest and awareness of a place or a people. When God is moving someone into missions, he is ordinarily giving them a recurring — not just a flash in the pan — growing interest and awareness of a need he’s leading them to. So, my question for people is this: What are you reading about? What are you investigating? What do you return to? Again and again, what are you finding compelling as you ponder the needs of the world?
5. Desire for Missions
The renewed mind takes seriously the growing desire of the heart for the work of missions. 1 Timothy 3:1 says that elders are to aspire to and desire the work of the ministry. And I take that as a principle that God uses to draw us into his work. Do you find this work desirable? Is your desire growing? Is it reaching the point of irresistibility? That’s what happened for me on October 14, 1979, when I was struggling with whether to stay a professor at a college or whether to be a pastor. And all I knew to say was that at about midnight that night, it became irresistible after years of brewing.
6. Local Church Affirmation
The renewed mind takes seriously the affirmation and confirmation of the local church. It’s essential that you be part of a local church. This is the normal way of being a Christian. Experience in a local church is the only way I know anybody who could go to the mission field and know what to do once he got there, because it’s churches that we want to come into being so that believers have a way to be discipled there. Part of the experience of the local church is to confirm our gifts, confirm our desires, confirm our skills, and confirm our compassion. And without that confirmation, we will tend to be loners who can very easily mistake God’s leading.
7. Desire for God’s Glory
And the last thing I would say is that the renewed mind wants to glorify God above everything. We want to see the glory of God celebrated in the world.
And so, in all of these things, are we pursuing the glory of God? Do we see what we’re being led to as what will glorify God most? Immerse yourself in the word, pray without ceasing, take these seven factors seriously, and the effect I think will be that you’ll know eventually.
