How did you know you were called?

I volunteered, and God took me up on it.....

I honestly don't think God culls through His people and picks "you, you, not you, you..."

I think He wants us to turn and say "here am I, send me" and then He sends you where He wants you to go. That might be a farm in upper Iowa with 3 horses, 4 pigs, a duck and a cow.....but it also might be the far shores of Japan. Either way you are sent by God to do a work for Him.

Does that make it clear as mud?

 

I have heard that when one is called by God to be a missionary or a Pastor, they would not be happy doing anything else.

I have been called to do various things for people and wasn't sure it was God until afterwards when I found out the people had been praying for that very thing to happen.

No audible voice, just the Holy Spirit speaking to my spirit.

Sometimes a call is confirmed in the mouth of two or more witnesses (who you have not told about the call) and above all, don't forget to test the Spirits...

 

Oh, I get it now I'm slow sometimes


I was in chapel at Bible college actually. They were having a revival type meeting, lots of it was about missions, when suddenly I realized that was where God wanted me -

after the actual committment it seemed like it should have been obvious to me for years before that - really at the meeting I felt more like I was finally seeing something God had been trying to show me for a long time.

 

Blessed 18,

Could you expound on this?

 

In the fall of 1972, I was sitting in the back of the huge Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga listening to a missionary from Japan during the Tennessee Temple College missionary conference, a great affair with as many as 200 missionaries at a time. God spoke to my heart (not audibly) as if to say, "Would you go to Tokyo, Japan, if I asked you to?" My immediate reply was, "No way, Lord!" (A contradiction in terms, right?) The missionary had told us how Tokyo was the second most crowded city in the world, and I certainly did not like crowds!

God continued to work on my heart until the last day of the conference. There in my seat I surrendered to go where ever in the whole world the Lord wanted me to go, and had great peace about it. However, I did not take that as a call to Japan, just the call to be a missionary. I prayed about Hong Kong for four years after that, since I love the Chinese people and my parents had tried to go to Tibet under the China Inland Mission until the Communists took over.

When I graduated from college in August of 1976, Dr. Jim Norton of Japan, whose daughter was also graduating, was sitting behind my parents. They began talking, and Dad and Mom shared with him how I wanted to be a missionary to Asia. Dr. Norton met me outside after the graduation exercises, and after the greeting his first words to me were, "Will you pray about coming to work with me in Japan?" I went into seminary and prayed every day about the call to Japan. One day during my private devotions I read Romans 15:20-21, and God confirmed the call to Japan: "Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation: But as it is written, To whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand." The rest is history--well, my personal history anyway.

 

I just felt the desire within my heart to preach and felt that God was leading me in that direction. When I spoke with my Pastor he said, "If there is any way you can get out of it, you are not called to preach." I tried to run from it and drive it from my mind, but all that brought me was misery and restlessness. So on June 25, 1978 I surrendered to the call to preach the ministry.

 

1Jo 4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

 

Our Pastor was brining a message one Sunday morning. I don't even remember what it was about. But I had been searching for God for many, many years. I Just stood up, like a puppet on strings, but fully aware, and walked to the front of the church, something totally out of character for me. I was shaking like a leaf, but the Pastor took my hand and showed me John 3:16. It was like the whole world suddenly opened up and made sense to me. I could feel His light coming out of me from the inside out. It's a little dramatic, I know, but that's what happened. Now I talk to Him everyday, good days and bad ones.

love,

Sopranette

 

I just found some very interesting advice about the missionary call on a very informative missions website. I don't agree with everything, not being a Nazarene, but it is thought-provoking. Here is the link: http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/call.htm