When God Calls

Introduction—A call to nightclub ministry

When I was still a callow youth, around 19 years old, I was living in the Uniting Church’s college accomodation in Brisbane called Raymont Lodge. One of my fellow boarders was a passionate, young YWAMer. That means he was working with Youth With a Mission. And he certainly had a mission: he adamantly believed that God had called him to minister to the lost partying in Brisbane’s nightclubs in the city and the Valley. He was an articulate, handsome, charistmatic, young guy, and he used those natural gifts very powerfully in this ministry.

But at some point his passion for ministry became so overwhelming that he decided that every young Christian guy should join him in his ministry, and he spent quite some time trying to persuade me that I should join him in his nightclub ministry. Now, I didn’t disagree with him about his ministry—I considered it a perfectly legitimate ministry for him to have. But when he tried to insist that I should join him in that ministry I had different ideas. You see, I hated dancing, I hated nightclub music, I had an intense distaste for alcohol and didn’t enjoy seeing its effects on my peers, and I disliked the mindlessness that nightclubs inevitably induced in their attendees. While I could technically go to a nightclub and theoretically could have done ministry there, I knew I would have been truly awful at it. And, debating with my passionate friend, I realised that I already had an equivalent ministry: I played role playing games, like Dungeons & Dragons, deep into weekend nights. This, I explained, was my equivalent to nightclub ministry. Back then, neither nightclubs nor D&D dens were considered fit places for Christians, but both of us understood how God can call his people into Babylon to redeem Babylonians.

In recent months I’ve been thinking a lot about God’s call. Mable and I are answering a call from God to move to England for a few years. Now, I’m old and wise enough to know that, just because God is calling us to do that, it doesn’t mean that he’s calling you to do that.

But how do we know when God calls us? Or, more generally, how does God call?

And that raises another question: who does God call?

And finally, that raises a last question: What is it that God calls us to?

So, we have three questions:

How does God call? (What does God’s call look like)

Who does God call? (Does he call all of us to something?)

What is it that God calls us to? (What is our “mission?”)

Let’s work through these questions and see what they have to say to us. A warning: answering these questions soberly will change your life—you may even end up living on the other side of the world for a few years.

How God calls

Reality of God’s call

To discover how God calls us—we first must be sure that God does call people at all. What if God’s supposed call is just an excuse for us to do what we want to do?

Fortunately, to discover how God interacts with us, we have a reliable place to go: the Bible.

And the first thing you notice when you read the Bible, is that God is constantly calling people.

He spoke audibly to Abraham, Moses, Samuel and Elijah. Gideon and Isaiah encountered angels and Jeremiah and Ezekiel saw vivid visions.

The Bible contains numerous accounts of God summoning individuals to specific purposes, employing varied methods in many contexts.

In the New Testament, God was present with us in bodily form in Jesus, and so the disciples experienced his call in a very clear, physical way. Even the apostle Paul, called after Jesus has ascended to heaven, still saw a powerful and undeniable vision of Jesus (and subsequent visions, too).

There are other, more ambiguous callings: Paul and Barnabas were called as missionaries by the Spirit, Jonah’s call to preach in Ninevah reached him via uncertain means (although it was so powerful that Jonah became an international refugee in order to flee from it).

But is this how God calls us today? And how do we know it is God who is granting this vision? The Bible records other gods interacting with human beings, so we know that it is possible for people to be misled by supernatural experiences.

An example of a false call

An example of how someone can be mislead about a visionary call is Ellen Gould White, the founder of Seventh Day Adventists, who claimed to have seen a vision in 1858 of God instructing his people to practice the Sabbath in order to be ready for his coming. You may have noticed that we don’t practice that, so we clearly don’t think White received a genuine call.

I think it is actually relatively easy to discern whether a vision is from God or not. As Christians, we are confident that the Bible is God’s word. The Bible reveals that God doesn’t change—he has an eternal plan which he is working out throughout history. So any new vision must somehow fit together with his word. For example, Peter’s vision at Joppa, when he was asked to eat unclean animals, demonstrated that the commands of the old Mosaic covenant were not automatically carried over into the new covenant that the Christian church operates under. Peter could understand that this was not God contradicting himself, because Peter was living in a New Covenant era—what Jesus called the Last Days—which Christians were still learning about. God was simply expressing a new type of relationship with his children, much like how a parent giving more freedom to their teenager is not contradicting their stricter treatment of them as a toddler.

But in the case of White’s vision of practicing the Sabbath, this “word” goes directly against both Jesus’ teaching on the Sabbath and the Last Days and that of the apostles in the New Testament. Furthermore, White does not give any reason to overturn Scripture’s teaching on this, so we can discern that her vision was not from God.

Contrast of our experience

Now you might be thinking, I haven’t had a vision from God, or heard him speak audibly! Am I somehow a second-class Christian?

Hardly! Yes, occasionally people receive visions, but outside of situations where that is the only way God can reach people, genuine visions seem relatively rare, in my experience. (We’ll talk in a moment about what I mean by a genuine vision.) Does that mean God has no call for most of us? No, of course not—there is much to consider yet.

After all, we have yet to examine another type of call that is also present in the Bible.

Esther’s call

I mentioned a bunch of famous Bible characters that God called in very obvious ways. But there is another group of almost equally famous Bible characters that God called in quite a different way. This group includes Joseph (the son of Jacob), Daniel, and Esther. None of these three received a vision or audible call from God, although Joseph did receive a dream that gave him a glimpse of the future, and Daniel eventually saw visions and heard from God as a prophet. But neither Joseph nor Daniel were given any guidance from God when they were first called to act in a difficult situation. They simply had to act out of their understanding of God’s character and trust that he would carry them through.

But for Esther the contrast with people like Moses or Isaiah is even more stark—the name of God isn’t even mentioned in the book that bears her name. She had to discern whether her cousin Mordecai’s advice was godly or not, and that decision was a matter of life or death!

Let’s just take a step back, and look at Esther’s situation. Let’s read it in the Bible.

Esther 2:5–10 ESV

5 Now there was a Jew in Susa the citadel whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jair, son of Shimei, son of Kish, a Benjaminite, 6 who had been carried away from Jerusalem among the captives carried away with Jeconiah king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away. 7 He was bringing up Hadassah, that is Esther, the daughter of his uncle, for she had neither father nor mother. The young woman had a beautiful figure and was lovely to look at, and when her father and her mother died, Mordecai took her as his own daughter. 8 So when the king’s order and his edict were proclaimed, and when many young women were gathered in Susa the citadel in custody of Hegai, Esther also was taken into the king’s palace and put in custody of Hegai, who had charge of the women. 9 And the young woman pleased him and won his favor. And he quickly provided her with her cosmetics and her portion of food, and with seven chosen young women from the king’s palace, and advanced her and her young women to the best place in the harem. 10 Esther had not made known her people or kindred, for Mordecai had commanded her not to make it known.

Now, there are several things to note here. Mordecai and Esther are Jews in exile, part of the Jewish diaspora. When King Ahaseurus decides to replace his queen, he scours the city for potential replacements, and Esther is caught in that net. So far, she might remind you of Daniel.

But almost immediately things go differently. Unlike Daniel, Esther doesn’t use her situation to insist on a Jewish diet or keeping the Sabbath, rather she gets the conventional, Persian tools to promote her bid to be queen. And Esther cooperates with Mordecai to keep her Jewish heritage a secret.

Esther 2:15–17 ESV

15 When the turn came for Esther the daughter of Abihail the uncle of Mordecai, who had taken her as his own daughter, to go in to the king, she asked for nothing except what Hegai the king’s eunuch, who had charge of the women, advised. Now Esther was winning favor in the eyes of all who saw her. 16 And when Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus, into his royal palace, in the tenth month, which is the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign, 17 the king loved Esther more than all the women, and she won grace and favor in his sight more than all the virgins, so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti.

When the time comes to compete for the position of queen, Esther listens to her Persian advisor, and wins over every Persian heart, including the king’s. But to do this she has completely compromised her Jewish identity. Unlike Daniel, she has eaten Persian food, she has not kept the Sabbath (it would not have been possible for her to do this in the royal court), and she marries a gentile. From a Jewish perspective, Esther is hopelessly compromised.

Why would God call such a person? How could he use such a hopeless sell-out?

Well, you know the story: a terrible character, Haman, the ultimate anti-semite, takes offense at Mordecai’s stubborn refusal to bow down and worship him, and plots to wipe out every Jew in the empire. Mordecai’s only hope is to use Esther as a way to get an invitation to talk to the king. But even Esther can’t simply walk in on the king—that would mean the death sentence, even for the queen. Yet this is what Mordecai is asking:

Esther 4:13–16 ESV

13 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. 14 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?” 15 Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, 16 “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.”

Finally, Esther agrees to Mordecai’s desperate plan, and recognises the call that has been placed on her life. Perhaps Mordecai’s challenge “who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” helps her realise that her life is not her own, and never has been.

Who does God call?

Which brings us to our second question: who does God call?

If you thought that God only called perfect or near-perfect people, then Esther must be a surprise to you. But even Moses doesn’t fit that mould. When God called Moses he called an international fugitive guilty of murder. When God called David to be king, he called the least important son of a family with generations of scandalous intermarriage with foreigners. Matthew was collecting tax, a practice considered the height of treason, when Jesus called him. When Jesus called the Apostle Paul, he called a man who was hounding God’s own people to death. And so on.

God’s call is not limited by us, either by our situation or our attitude. God calls us because he wants to work out his great plan of salvation through us. Ultimately, God calls us to bring glory to himself. For a human, wanting to bring glory to yourself is hubris—excessive pride. But for God, bringing glory to himself is the best thing to do, because God actually is glorious and any creature that doesn’t recognise and understand that is doomed to be completely twisted and distorted, constantly at war with itself. And, of course, God loves his creatures and wants them to be at peace and fruitful.

So God calls whoever he wants. I believe that in these Last Days, those that God calls are known as the church. In other words, God calls us to follow and obey Jesus, and those who have said yes to that call are the church.

Which brings us to our third question: what does God call us to.

What does God call us to?

Obviously, as I have just said, God calls us to follow and obey Jesus. Jesus (who is, of course, God) told his disciples:

John 14:15 ESV

15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

That’s a pretty clear call: to keep Jesus’ commandments. We should not diminish the complexity and difficult of this call. Discerning the practical implications of this call (understanding how to live our Jesus’ commandments) is a lifetime’s work. But still, I want to ask the question today, does God call us to anything more specific than this? Does God have specific places, relationships or activities for us?

I believe he does. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth about how we work together using our distinct gifts and callings to serve God.

1 Corinthians 12:12 ESV

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

1 Corinthians 12:27–30 ESV

27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 28 And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?

Paul is clearly teaching that different people have different callings within the church. Furthermore, this list here is far from complete—Paul refers to other gifts in other places. Just in case it’s not obvious, I want to emphasise that church work mostly doesn’t occur here, in the church. God most often calls us to kingdom work as engineers and teachers and nurses and receptionists and waiters and cooks and gardeners and cleaners and so on. He wants us in the world, but not of it.

Not only is our role or function distinct, but so is our geographic area of calling. In the book of Acts, we see how Paul is specifically called to Macedonia:

Acts 16:7–9 ESV

7 And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. 8 So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. 9 And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”

God is at work through creation in many ways, and he calls us to join him in specific places, relationships and activities.

He calls all of us.

There is not a follower of Jesus who is not called to join God in his work to redeem the world.

You are called.

I am called.

We are each individually and all collectively called to serve God as he guides us to.

This is both an incredible privilege and an incredible responsibility. We are not called to serve God because he is unable to achieve his aims on his own. We are called to serve God in order to raise us up as his adopted children; joint heirs of the kingdom beside Jesus the King; princes and princesses of the Kingdom of God. The apostle Peter wrote to the church:

1 Peter 2:9–10 ESV

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

We are a royal priesthood—we are just like Jesus the priest-king. God has called us, all of us, to these two highest of all high roles—royalty and priesthood.

That’s pretty incredible, isn’t it?

How do we open ourselves to God’s call?

So we’ve answered our three questions on God’s calling. But this brings us to the important, practical question of how we hear and respond to God’s call.

When God’s call is challenging, how do we avoid Jonah’s response of fleeing? When God’s call is unclear and dangerous how do we join Esther in accepting the challenge?

I believe there are three important facets to being open to a call from God, and they involve the time before the call, the time of the call, and the time after the call. They are: preparing, discerning, and acting.

Preparing

The first way to be open to God’s call is to prepare for it.

The two men who were most responsive to God’s voice went about preparing in the same way. Both Jesus and King David spent time with God, pondering on his word, alone in his creation. It was when David was less attentive to this practice that he made his greatest mistakes. But even then the foundation he had laid in understanding God’s character gave him the ability to hear God’s rebuke and return to him.

For us, too, there is no substitute for time in God’s word and in prayer with him. And when I say “in prayer with him” I don’t mean begging him for a bunch of favours. In the midst of chaos and war, the Sons of Korah sing of God’s constant presence:

Psalm 46:10 ESV

10 “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”

In the same way, the author of Hebrews says:

Hebrews 13:5 ESV

5 Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

My final thought on preparation is to consider Jesus’ famous parable of the soils:

Matthew 13:23 ESV

23 As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

What is good soil? It is soil that is not rocky, or packed down like a path, or covered in weeds. In other words, it is soiled that has been tilled and prepared to receive the word.

In preparing to receive God’s call, we must clear our hearts of the weeds that are the “cares of the world,” we must root out the rocks of rebellion and hard-heartedness, and we must loosen the hard soil of our hearts so that we understand God and his ways. That way, when God’s call comes, it will immediately take root and produce fruit.

Discerning

Which brings us to the time of the call. How do we discern God’s call?

Hearing a voice or seeing a vision

I mentioned about how Ellen Gould White was tricked by a vision that was clearly not from God. How do we avoid that mistake?

Here is some guidance from the New Testament:

1 John 4:1–3 ESV

1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

Pretty clear, right? This is a very straight-forward theological test. Theology is important!

Galatians 1:8–9 ESV

8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Paul’s advice to the Galatian church is a bit more complex, but it amounts to the same thing: any call must match what you know about God from the Bible. In fact, Paul’s advice in Galatians reveals the error in Ellen Gould White’s vision, since it claimed that people were saved by “works of the law,” as opposed to “hearing with faith.”

And finally, Paul’s terse advice to the Thessalonians is incredibly useful:

1 Thessalonians 5:20–21 ESV

20 Do not despise prophecies, 21 but test everything; hold fast what is good.

In other words, be open to hearing from God, but not so open that you think everything is a message from God. Test everything and pay attention to what passes the test. How do you test it? Well, just as we have already seen: we compare any new call to the solid, objective word of God found in the Bible.

So, if we hear a voice or see a vision, we should test it against the Scriptures to see if it is consistent.

Discerning God’s call in circumstances

But God’s call is not always so clear. For example, Mable and my call to England was not a voice from God, nor was it a dream of an Englishman saying “Come over to England and help us.” It’s not even a call to a church or church position!

Most times, in this day and age, our experience will be like Esther’s, with no voice or vision from God. So how can we tell when God is calling us in the midst of circumstance?

The story of Esther reveals two important principles.

1. Listen to spiritual wise leaders or elders or mentors.

In Esther’s case, she was guided by her elder cousin, Mordecai’s advice. Remember that Mordecai had adopted Esther as his own daughter when her parents died.

So be open to wisdom from elders. For example, last week Steve offered up a call to all of us to serve in various ways in Burleigh. Of course, as in the case for voices and visions, you should still test this advice, as Esther did when she asked for the whole community to fast along with her. Prayerfully consider the opportunities you are offered.

2. Be aware of both the world around you and the Kingdom of God (be a good ambassador)

The second thing that was important in Esther’s case, and is important in ours, is to be aware of the intersection between the world we live in and the Kingdom of Heaven we belong to. In Esther’s case that intersection occurred when Haman decided to slaughter the Jews and Mordecai has an “in” with the king to act against that. It is important that we neither isolate ourselves from the world nor forget who our true king is. Paul describes this role as being an ambassador.

2 Corinthians 5:20 ESV

20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

The role of an ambassador is to become intimately familiar with a foreign country and to live there. But they do that so that they can represent their own kingdom. No matter how well an ambassador understands the country they live in, they must never forget their citizenship, or else they become worse than useless. We are ambassadors for God; we need to understand this world and live in it so that we can represent God here, bringing people back into relationship with him.

When we understand this, we will be able to discern God’s call. We will see God’s hand at work in circumstances and will discern where we need to join him. We will be able to see the good works God has prepared for us to do, as Paul tells the church in Ephesus:

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Acting

Which brings us, finally, to actually doing what God has called us to do.

It may not surprise you to discover that this simply involves continuing to walk in God’s ways, just as we did in preparation for and in discerned God’s call on our lives. As the verse from Ephesians makes clear, we are simply doing what we were made to do. In so many ways we merely need to trust God.

But Paul also talks about following God’s call as running a race, competing for a prize, and many other strenuous activities.

Which is it? It is both. Acting on God’s calling is both simple and difficult, effortless and exhausting, straightforward and bewildering. But it is always rewarding and fulfilling. You know when you are acting on God’s calling because God does things through you that you could never have done on your own.

Some personal examples

I think it’s important to finish with some personal examples. But I’ve monopolised the personal examples so far, and I want you to share your own. So, turn to the person next to you, and briefly discuss two-and-a-half questions. I’ve put a timer on the slide to count-down the time you have for discussion.

Have you experienced a call of God recently?

How do you know it was God, and what are you doing about it?

Cheat Sheet:

Prepare (by aligning yourself with God through his word)

Discern (test voices, listen to wisdom, be a good ambassador)

Act (walk in the good works God has prepared for you)

OK. Does anyone really want to share with the church? We have a couple of minutes.

Alright, let me close with a prayer that Paul prayed over the saints of Ephesus:

Ephesians 1:15–23 NIV

15 For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. 17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Amen