The Confusing Language of Calling

It is common Christian parlance to say “I feel called to do so and so…” What we’re usually trying to communicate is we feel that God has given us a specific missional assignment in God’s Kingdom. I wonder, however, if that language is not misleading and harmful. Where do we really find biblical support for all these special “callings”?

Christians never need to be “called” to live missionally, it is inherent in being a disciple. To become a disciple of Jesus means you begin to evaluate your talents in terms of how they can best be used in the spread of God’s Kingdom. Say you are a businessman, and you know your talents are best suited for work in the marketplace where you can do excellent work to the glory of God and benefit of humanity and use relationships there to testify to Christ. You don’t have to wait on a call to begin to do so. When you become a disciple, you begin to immediately live missionally, no longer for yourself, but for Jesus. You go to work each day doing your work for the glory of God, the benefit of humanity, and in pursuit of proclaiming Jesus.

If that is the case, then if you realize that your talents can be best be used in God’s Kingdom by using them overseas to benefit a poorer nation and you can use your skill there to testify to Christ, why must we wait on a call to do so? I say this because we have so many people sitting around waiting on some warm-fuzzy, goose-bump-inducing vision from God before they will even consider serving overseas. If your talents can best serve God’s Kingdom by using them overseas, why would you wait on a call to do so? You have alrady been given that call!  To do what is best with your talents for the Kingdom of God is not a special calling God gives to some disciples, it is the duty of all disciples. Maybe we’ve invented the whole language of calling to mask the fact that most Christians have never started to live missionally, as disciples. Personally, I think the parlance of calling is evangelical heresy.

So, let me say it clearly: I DON’T THINK YOU NEED TO BE ‘CALLED’ TO GO OVERSEAS. No more than I think you need to be “called” to live missionally wherever you are. I don’t think you have to wait until God spells out “Africa” in your Cheerios one morning. I think you, as a disciple, have to ask, “How can my talents best be used in God’s mission all over the world?” If the answer is that you can be part of an overseas community-building, Jesus-preaching project, don’t wait for a “calling”. Pack your bags.

Instead of “calling,” maybe what we should be looking for from God is GUIDANCE. Maybe our prayer should go like this: “God, you did not give your talents to me for me, simply to live where I want to live and make a ton of money to live luxuriously. My talents are yours—dedicated to doing all I can to extend the message of your Kingdom all over the world. Guide me in seeing where I can be most beneficial on earth.” If you’re not willing to pray that prayer and obey what God tells you out of it, then you’re not really a disciple of Jesus.

I owe this insight due to a vigorous discussion I was in with a group of the greatest guys on earth I get together with every other Friday—future church planters and pastors and Christian entrepreneurs.

Comments

[JataoGa]

May I suggest changing "Guide me in seeing where I can be most beneficial on earth.” to "Guide me in living where I can be most beneficial on earth, even if I never get to see how you choose to use me.” We need to be so totally given to God that He can place us, use us how He would and not provide explanation of what is going on. Until one reaches that place faith and trust have just been nice words in the conversation. Giving up the control, giving up the satisfaction of seeing the harvest come in, giving up the need for comprehending before moving are part of the totally committed life.

Here is another tidbit to chew on...recently read that being a disciple is to be filled with a passion to become like the teacher. Follow this thinking anc consider Jesus directive to go and make disciples is akin to saying go make people passionate about being like me. This lends to the perspective on making diciples something of just go live and be so real that people around where you live will want to get closer to me because they have been close to you.

[Brandon Hudson]

I think we need to be careful with our use of pragmatism. We need to delineate between using it to determine what we are to do and where/when we are supposed to do it. I agree that it is wise to evaluate our God-given gifts and abilities in order to figure out how to best be used for His glory. If someone doesn't like singing, has a bad voice, and no musical talent, they probably are not "called" to be a music minister. In other words, it is wise to serve God using the strengths he has given us.
The problem with pragmatism is when we extend it to the evaluate where and when we should go. We are most likely not going to see as much of a result if we leave go to an unreached area that does not allow Christians to assemble as we would if we stayed here and did revivals. William Carey had very few converts during his entire life in India. If we think pragmatically, it would almost always make sense to stay in America where an American knows the culture and language best. However, God has explicitly commanded us in His Word to go to the ends of the earth, so we must go whether it makes sense to us or not.
In "Let the Nations Be Glad" John Piper uses the analogy of a rescue crew working all night to save people from a wreck. They are saving a lot of people where they are at but off in the distance they hear the call of others. They know if they leave where they are they won't be able to save as many people, but if they don't go, no one from the other wreck will be saved.
It is a tough dilemma but I personally, and don't take this the wrong way, have more sympathy for people who have never had an opportunity to respond to the Gospel than for those who can't go to Walmart without passing four churches and have had much more of an opportunity to respond.
To bring it back to the point, it is wise to use pragmatism to evaluate what God has gifted us with and how we can most be effective but I think we run into danger when we use the same thinking to see where God wants us to go. We must not put any more emphasis on the amount of people that are saved than the amount of people groups that have heard the Gospel. Nowhere in Scripture are we commanded to see a great number come to Christ; however, we are commanded to take Christ to every people group.

[Russ R.]

Excellent insights, JD. I appreciate this post; it is timely for me. My wife and I would much rather be elsewhere; namely, still overseas. But we feel "called" to where we are here in the U.S. to help others realize the exact things you communicated in this post. Just this morning a good friend in our group shared with me and my wife that God had, indeed, spelled out "Africa" in her Cheerios, so to speak. For us it was a joy and a confirmation to us that He has us in this place for a reason. Much like you are purposing to do where you are -- open people's eyes to the reality that there is a lost and dying world in and beyond their community. Blessings.

[Lloyd]

Perhaps much would depend on how one defines "call". If feeling God has called you means He spelled out "Africa" in your Cheerios, then probably not. When I went overseas nearly 39 years ago I struggled with the request that I explain my "call". I didn't eat Cheerios, so that was out. For me it was a quiet realization that God kept bringing the nations to my mind, that I was constantly praying for the nations, that I longed to see those people know the One who had transformed my life.

I probably don't have an answer for the question of the validity of a "call", but there is abundant biblical evidence of God telling his people go to specific places and to do specific things . . . from the Old Testament prophets to Phillip, to the Apostle Paul. Would God giving you a dream in which a Macedonian man says "Come over and help us" come pretty close to a "call"?

You're right on when you say that the question of a special "call" is probably a smoke screen many Christians use so as not to exercise their gifts to extend the Kingdom.

And we probably need to look long and hard at what the "office" of "Apostle" meant in the New Testament and whether the apostolic gifting is something limited to "ordained" people (another non-biblical concept). Being a "sent one" has too long been the property of the clergical class in Protestant/Evangelical practice, if not theology. We need to recapture the concept that the church is the "setting apart" agent and that those sent out do not need to have some magical ceremony performed over them to qualify them to be missionaries. Making everyone "clergy" so they can go out robs the members of the body of Christ of their rightful role and is more akin to Catholic theology than to New Testament theology. Certainly the church needs to send them out, to commission them, but probably not to make all the saints (Eph. 4:12) into clergy so they can go.

What I do believe is that once you are "out there" if you don't have a strong sense that God has placed you there, you probably won't be able to stand up to the pressures of living cross culturally. Certainly moving to another culture and language for ministry purposes on the basis of a "warm fuzzy", or emotional response to needs is not enough to give you the "stick-to-itivness" needed to last beyond nine months to a year. If you don't have a strong conviction that God has you there for a specific purpose, when the opposition comes and the grating aspects of living cross culturally build up, you'll probably go back home in defeat.

[jurisnaturalist]

Jesus said, "I only do that which I see my Father in Heaven doing." That was His definition of calling. God reveals to each of us something of what He is doing when we take the time to ask. The problem is that we either don't ask, because we don't want to be responsible for His answer, or we ask for something too specific, like what exactly should we do, so that again, we don't have to be responsible for the results, and we don't have to take a risk.
But the Creator who made us also instilled creativity within us. He sees the future in the long run, in which case risk is not an issue. He challenges us to see into the future the way He does, and to join Him in risk-taking, and creating.
In terms of obeying commandments we have all the revelation we require. But in terms of being missional we must connect with our Father, and exercise the power of His Holy Spirit in doing what Jesus did.
Nathanael Snow

[Brandon Hudson]

Nathananael Snow
That is true that we are to look to God for guidance, but we already have revealed to us what our Father in Heaven is doing. It is revealed in His Word and in there we see that He told Abraham that He will save all the nations and we see Him commanding us to make disciples of the entire world. We need no special revelation beyond what is already revealed to us in Scripture. We may receive one and we can continue to seek God for His guidance, but He has given us enough guidance in His word alone that we know what our "calling" is.

[Jeff]

Hey JD,
I had a question about the service on Sunday. Didn't know where else to put it.
I totally follow the logic that you gave during the service, but I don't completely agree that there is a reason for the cross in what you said.
Here's my question:
If God makes the rules, then why does Jesus have to die? The assumption there is that since God created the universe and all that's in it, he has control over how all of it works.
I realize this may be a long answer, and I don't expect a dissertation. It's just a question that occurred to me, and even though I've read some things, I'm not sure how to reconcile this question.

Thanks!
jclail@gmail.com

[jurisnaturalist]

I might be the oddball, but I needed a little special revelation a couple of times in my life. These were times when I felt God speak to my understanding about a decision I needed to make. I don't put faith in anything which can't stand up when tested against scripture, but there is room for God to use us in unique individual ways. He has given me a vision, a purpose, a goal, that is in line with His stated goals in the scriptures, though a bit counterintuitive to the human mind. Whether I ever achieve it or not is of no importance to His achieving His decrees, but has something to do with my opportunity to participate in what He is doing, and celebrating the joy of allowing Him to work through me.
What really made the difference was the decision to fast.
Nathanael Snow

[Raudel]

Hi, just wanted to make a quick distinction here, I think the great commission given to us in Matthews 28:19-20 to go and preach the Gospel everywhere, starting with our very own town, it's a command, not a calling, every Christian needs to live that. Having said that, I think a calling is simply an specific invitation, an invitation from God for you to do something and/or go somewhere at a "specific" time. Again, the great commission it's a given, and we should all be living it, it's not a calling/invitation, it's a command. We just need to love God with everything we have, love our neighbor, simply live the great commission (in our end of the earth), and lock eyes with God, because when we do not take our eye off of God, God can take us anywhere he wants.
Bendiciones :)

[Anne Foster]

Are "female" Christian entrepreneurs welcome to the master mind get together or is it just "guys". If it is gender open I am interested...:)

[Chris Hilliard]

JD, excellent food for thought. I have often had similar ponderings about this "call" thing. I've often wrestled to answer the question of my "calling" into ministry. To be honest, the call came the day I was saved. I often say I had sort of a Paul-type calling. I was called into ministry when I was saved. From early on I just knew that if I was going to give Jesus my life, then I was going to give him my LIFE. I simply followed His guidance and sought to impact the greatest number of people with the gifts/opportunities God has given me.

Great post.