The Missionary Call

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, June 11th. Today we'll look at Christ's last instructions for His followers. And all believers are obligated to carry out Christ's final command.

Here's a reminder about our missionary call. God issues three calls to every single person. First of all is the call to salvation. That is the call to confess our sins, to repent of our sins, and place our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior and our Master and our Lord. The second call is the call to sanctification. That is the call to bring our conversation, our conduct, and our character under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

The third call is the call to service. And that is a call for us to give ourselves in service to God by serving other people, and in so doing, we fulfill God's purpose for their life, and we also fulfill God's purpose for our own life. And so every single one of us, God intends to receive three calls, salvation, sanctification, and service. And so the question is, if God has issued these three calls to my life, how many of them have I answered?

Secondly, if I have not, why not? And thirdly, what am I going to do about these calls in my life, at least the one of the two that I have not answered? Well, God calls us when He comes to service to do many things. He may call you to be a schoolteacher.

He may call you to be an attorney or a doctor. He may be called you to be a carpenter. He may call you to be a homemaker or a preacher.

It doesn't make any difference as long as it's God's call in your life. One of those calls is a call to missions. That is a call to be a missionary.

That may be across town or it may be across the seas in some foreign country. But God does call people for very specific reasons, and He calls us to do a very specific work. And so I want you to listen very carefully, not for my sake, but for your sake. You may be sixteen. You may be twenty-six, thirty-six, forty-six, fifty-six, sixty-six, seventy-six. You say, well, God certainly wouldn't call me to the mission field at sixty or seventy years of age.

Yes, He does. Now I want you to listen carefully. Because you may be sitting here and saying, well, now I've heard all that, but I just don't believe God's going to call me. Let me ask you a question. Do you have the courage? Do you have the courage to say, well, now, Lord, I don't believe that you're necessarily calling me to the mission field, but I am opening my heart to be able to, I do want to hear whatever you have to say.

Are you willing to tell Him that? Lord, I want you to speak to my heart. No matter what I think, what my plans are, my ambitions, my goals, my dreams, God, I want to hear you speak to my heart today. If you will, that He's going to bless you whether He calls you or not. Now let's think about this missionary call.

And I would say two or three things about it. And first of all, simply this, that the missionary call is a divine call. That is, if somebody goes to the mission field and haven't been called by God, they're going to be an absolute failure.

There's so many challenges, so many heartaches, so many difficulties at times, more than likely they're going to be a failure. The missionary call is a divine call. But secondly, it's a call that requires a personal commitment. When God calls us, there is only one acceptable, legitimate response, yes. Somebody says, well, now, you know, I'm willing to go wherever God wants me to go, but I have a few stipulations. Let me ask you a question, who do you think you are to bargain with God? How can you bargain with God if He doesn't make any mistakes and He knows you need and He has the best for you and He, listen, somebody says, well, you know, the Lord called me and I fought Him and fought Him and fought Him.

Let me ask you a question. Just think for a moment realistically. Fight against a call from God to take second best, third best, fourth best, fifth best and risk ruining and wrecking and destroying your life. Whenever God calls you, forget the buts. It's not my business or your business to qualify a call from God. It is a divine call based on a divine purpose. Listen, divine wisdom and a divine plan, personal plan.

So there are no qualifications. I can't say, well, I'm willing to go, but now, now, Lord, what about my finances now? And what about this? I want to be sure you're going to take care of that.

You know what? When God calls, the only thing I'm responsible for is to say yes. Every need, every enablement He's responsible for. He's not going to call you to do anything He's not going to equip you to do. God takes care of those who serve Him, period. And somebody says, well, I'm willing to answer the call, but I want to know where I'm going. My friends, you may sit in church year after year after year. God may not tell you where He's going to send you until you have said yes to His unconditional call. And secondly, He may have to equip you in some ways where you will be able to acknowledge and your faith will have grown a bit to be able to say, yes, God, I don't know how, but I'm going to trust you.

I think all of us can look back in our life and say, oh, dear Lord, if you had required this of me 20 years ago, I just think I'd have died in a pile right there. But now you have encouraged me, you've strengthened me, you've built my faith, you've helped me to understand your ways and your Word and your will. The answer is yes, God, what do you want me to do? It requires a personal commitment on our part. The third thing I think that's so important about the missionary call is this, that the missionary call involves great challenges.

First of all, the challenge is what about your family? And sometimes a single young man or young woman will say, well, to their parents, I believe God's called me to missions. Oh, now, now, now, now, now, now, where is He calling you? Is He calling you? Well, sure, He must be calling you somewhere in this country.

No, He's calling me to Southeast Asia. Well, son, that's another side of the world, that's right. But, Mom, I want you to know something, God's over there too. God's over there too.

Leaving the family sometimes is a major challenge, especially maybe when those parents are not as well as they could be. God knows that. It may be often that God will call a man to missions and his wife has a difficult problem with that. God knows how to change her mind. Sometimes the children are such that they think, well, what in the world will happen to us?

You know what? God will show them how He can work in their life. Sometimes there's an emotional trauma. Somebody says, wait a minute now, I've always heard that whatever our parents tell us, that surely we should obey our parents at all costs, no matter what. Well, let me just read you a verse of Scripture. Because you may love your parents, and I certainly hope you love them with all of your heart and are willing to take care of them when they get a little old in life and be the kind of godly child you ought to be. But listen to this verse of Scripture.

I'll give it to you in a moment. I want you to listen. If anyone comes to me and does not hate, we'll explain in a moment, hate, mother, father, listen, mother, father, wife, children, brothers and sisters, and his own life also can't be my disciple. Well, what in the world does that mean? God doesn't want us to hate.

No, here's what He's saying. That He requires such loyalty and devotion to Him that if we obey Him in certain circumstances, it will appear to the people that we love the most or the people that love us the most. How could you leave me? How could you go on the other side of the world? How could you do this? It will appear to them that it's anger or hostility or hatred. How could you possibly love me and do this?

Because God has called me. That's the reason. No, it's not hatred. It's not animosity. It's not hostility.

It is a measure of love that oftentimes is misunderstood. There is a challenge to leave the things that are comfortable and convenient and family and friends to be obedient to God. But you know what? To my knowledge, the word convenience is not in Scripture. I never have been able to find convenience in the Scripture.

You know, it doesn't fit. You see, that's not even a part of what we're about. We are about obeying God.

There will be times of convenience and times of comfort and times of pleasure and times of happiness, but there'll also be challenges. Somebody says, well, but what about this raising support? That is, am I responsible for my financial support? Some organizations, that's what they require. Well, I just could never do that. Why not? Remember this, God assumes responsibility for taking care of you no matter who you are when you obey Him. Listen, if God has called you to the mission field and He is requiring you to raise your support, don't you know that God is already speaking to some of us about your support? Let me ask you a question. Is it even within reach of the character of God that He would fail to meet your needs? No. Inexcusable.

When God calls us, I don't have any acceptable excuse. He knows all about family. He knows all about finances.

He knows all about handicaps. He knows all about these things that you and I can say, well, now, Lord, what about this? And we can go into the Scripture and what about this verse?

I'm not sure about this. And besides that, what about all the things that could possibly happen to me, God? I've listened to these missionaries and the difficulties they've been through and story after story and you know what?

No matter what they've suffered, what they've been through, they've always been so awesomely overwhelmed with the presence of God in their life during these times. Are there sacrifices? Yes. Are there obstacles? Yes. Are there dangers?

Yes. There are all kinds of things that when it comes to the missionary call, I think about the discouragement oftentimes that they face. I think about the loneliness that they face at times, especially when they're out yonder somewhere and the only people around you are those that you're trying to reach who don't understand your ways and it cannot speak your language. I think about the things that go on among missionaries that have to go on because we all have our naturalists no matter who we are and how godly we are.

The discouragement, the misunderstandings, yes, they're challenges, but you know what? Every time I think about a challenge in the ministry of missions, here's what I do. I just look at the cross and remind myself, nothing ever equals that. So I have no complaints. And I think most missionaries would tell you the same thing.

You know what? When you look at what Jesus Christ has done for us, how He saved us out of our sins and written out in the name of the Lamb's Book of Life. And listen, a missionary call is not some awful, terrible obligation. If that's your attitude about missions and a missionary call, you've missed who God is. It's not some awesome burdensome obligation. It is an awesome, indescribable, wonderful, matchless, divine opportunity to serve the living God and to give something back to Him.

That's what it is. Listen, when you love the Lord Jesus Christ, what He does is not an obligation. It is a joy. When you love the Lord Jesus Christ, it's not a burden, it's a privilege.

Challenge is yes. But I want to remind you of one other thing, and that's this, that the missionary call is always accompanied by the awesome promises of God. For example, what is that promise? And I believe any missionary would say this to you, of all the promises of God, here's the one I need the most. I need the promise of His presence. What does He say?

I will never leave you nor forsake you. What did He say to those? He sent out, first of all, He said, I'll go with you even to the ends of the earth. When you and I take the first step in obedience to God to answer His call, every single step in that call is accompanied by the presence of the Son of God, who could not fail us by leaving us to ourselves. So, listen, for those moments of loneliness, we have His presence. For those moments of weakness when we feel inadequate, I think about missionaries who face all kinds of obstacles and feeling so inadequate when they feel so overwhelmed like a thimble full of water in a whole ocean of millions and millions of people who do not know the gospel, who have no interest, it appears at first in the gospel. How do we reach these language groups who know nothing about the Lord Jesus Christ?

What did He say? He said, and ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you. And ye shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth, which means that no matter where you and I go and where you would go as a missionary, listen, not only do you have the presence of God, you have the indwelling supernatural presence of the Holy Spirit to enable you to accomplish, to achieve anything, everything that God would call you to do so that it's inexcusable to say, well, you know, I just don't think I could do it. God wouldn't call you to do something He would not do through you, listen, with all of His awesome power. It's very evident that being a missionary is not easy business. But you see, accompanied with the promises of God, the promise of His presence, the promise of His power, the promise of His provision, the promise of His protection, listen, we have it here. We can have it anywhere God chooses to send us.

And one last thing I would say. The missionary call results in awesome consequences, eternal consequences. You think about this. Some have labored for years and years and years before they saw the first convert. But then look what happened.

Think about the awesome consequences. The reason you're saved, some missionary got the message to somebody who finally got it to you. And Paul said, because that was true, he says, I feel I'm a debtor to Jews and Greeks alike. And the truth is, all of us are debtors. We're debtors likewise to a world of people out there who do not know Christ as their Savior because somebody, one day, back yonder, all of us were in the category of those who were unsaved. And somebody persisted with the gospel until you and I trusted Jesus Christ as our Savior.

Let me ask you a question. Can we be satisfied when we know that there are missionaries ready to go, willing to go, committing themselves to go, and their financial responsibilities and not give? Can you and I really and truly be satisfied as a Christian and be so wrapped up in our own lives we never pray for those out there who are paying the price in the most difficult circumstances of life?

When I think about that, I think, Oh God, how unworthy we are, how unworthy we are to boast of anything when there are so many who are paying so great a price to get the gospel to the world. That He will not call us all to some foreign land. But listen carefully, because He doesn't, doesn't mean He's not called you and me to missions.

And I remember standing in the missions meetings when I was in seminary hoping God would call me, praying He would call me. Well, He didn't choose to call me to go to a foreign country physically, but He answered my prayer to make it possible for me to preach the gospel to every country in the world and at the same time stay right here. You give yourself to God, you know what He'll do? He'll choose where He sends you. He'll choose what He does with your life. All He's waiting to hear from you is, God, here am I, send me.

And whatever He chooses to do will be right for you. I simply want to ask you a question. Have you answered the call to salvation? Have you trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior? Have you asked Him to forgive you of your sins and based on what He did at the cross, when He died and atoned for all of your sins, paid your sin debt and full. Have you asked Him, have you received Him as your personal Savior by saying, Lord Jesus, I do believe in You as the Son of God and as my personal Savior. I accept You as my Savior, my Master and my Lord.

Have you done that? If not, I want to encourage you to do it. Plead with you to do it for your sake. Secondly, has there ever come a time of genuine, listen, genuine commitment to sanctification. God, I choose to give you my life. I want to live a godly life, a holy life.

I want to walk in Your way and I want to walk in Your will. And I will trust in the power of the Holy Spirit to lead me and guide me and enable me to walk that kind of life. When I falter, when I fall, God, I will confess and repent of that sin and move on. I will not wallow in my unfaithfulness. I will not wallow in my sinfulness. I will not wallow in my disobedience.

I will confess and repent and move on in the will of God. Have you ever made a definite decision to live godly before our Lord? And thirdly, have you ever made a decision, God, I choose to serve You wherever You send me, whether it's in my local church, whether it is serving You in an orphanage, in a hospital, in a clinic, in a church preaching the gospel, teaching the gospel somewhere else in the world or across town, wherever it is, God, here am I. I am Your vessel purchased by the blood of Your Son. I am an available servant of the living God. Use me, Lord, wherever to do whatever, whenever and wherever. Now I want to ask you one last question.

I close. What is there in your life today that would keep you from saying, Lord, whatever You want me to do, however and wherever, here is my life? What is there in your life that would keep you from telling your Savior Jesus Christ?

That's what you'll do. And I plead with you under the name of the Lord God Almighty, whatever it is, it's not worth what it will cost you to miss the will of God. Thank you for listening to The Missionary Call. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.