That means it is not man-made. It is God that initiates a call and when a call is from God, a sense of urgency is attached. I didn’t need to be called, but God chose to call. Jesus story of the man who wanted to follow him and the one He actually called comes to mind here.
In Luke 9:57-62 a man told Jesus I want to go with you, He put him off with just a statement, but went on to call another who did not want to follow. The latter said let me go and bury my father but He provided a sense of urgency and took the young man away. The call must be from God or it will fail.
There is no collective or family call. While believing that a priestly call goes to the lineage, each must come to have a personal dealing of the Lord. The fact that the father was called does not mean the wife or the children are called. The son must receive personally, a dealing of the Lord before he should be involved in ministry.
Today, we have myriad cases of succession in the pulpit and the wife becoming a preacher because the husband is. There is nothing wrong if the wife is called but if she is “Pastor (Mrs)” because the husband is a pastor, let the church beware of a tragedy. The call of God goes to individuals.
Our definition said that the call leaves the called man with no joy outside the Kings service. John Jowett puts it perfectly well when he said “An authentic call is not a preference among alternatives. Ultimately he had no altrnative: all other possibilities become dumb.
There is only one clear call sounding forth as the imperative summons of the eternal God.” If a man can still be very successful in his business while completely abandoning ministry then let him quit. If there still exists an alternative to preaching, I beg of you go for it. Samuel Moffet, famed missionary to Korea told his five sons “Don’t go into the ministry if you can help it!” But all of them became preachers on God’s call.
So if you can help with another alternative the ministry will be happy to miss you.
God does not call an idle or lazy man. He does not look for the retired and the frustrated. A frustrated man in business will be frustrated in ministry because there is no success trait or principle in him.
record proves that God’s men were called out of their services. Elisha was busy with his herds. Amos was a successful farmer, (Amos 1:1-3), Moses was busy shepherding (Ex.3:1-70), Peter was seriously fishing (Matt.4:4), Matthew a very serious revenue contractor. There is no record of any idle man brought into the king’s service.
The trend in our society today, is that God must wait for Thirty-five years so that a man could complete his government service. Then when the government declares him not fit for work, God will call him to be fit in His very tedious service.
There must be a deceit somewhere. One of the preacher’s most worthy credential before men and Satan is when he can say like Amos “I was a farmer..God called me out, so hear what He sent me to tell you”. The calling from active service is the beginning and strongest point in favour of the preacher’s credential argument.
The call may come to different people in different ways and in various circumstances. Moses may have a burning bush, Gideon may be threading wheat and Peter may be busy fishing but once the call comes it leaves the believer with the assurance that God desires him for a specific work. Certain things should be noted here:
We have many who have no personal experience of how he was called. He is in the ministry because someone prophesied to him that God has called him.
While the words of others, whether prophetic or by counsel may contribute to a man’s final ascertaining of his call, it is advisable that one should not become a preacher when he has not personally heard the call. Prophecy or counsel should only serve confirmatory functions.
There exist an innumerable number of preachers who have stories of trading, working or doing whatever and meeting with failures everywhere, so they think they have been called. Frustration, disappointments and sickness can be products of direct satanic attack, inactivity and carelessness and so does not in any way constitute a call.
This is not to say that a man called of God who refuses to serve God cannot be frustrated. In such a case, it is his disobedience or rebellion against God that frustrates him. The calling of God is without repentance and adds no sorrow to it.
There are certain elements that come together to constitute a call to ministry. Because of the variety in method and time of calling no one list of elements is too complete. I found one in the work of Alfred Gibbs that I think is very reliable. Alfred presents the following seven elements:
As the one that must guide us into all truth dwells in our heart ungreved.
He can impress our hearts and guide our thoughts into certain definite convictions as to the will of God for our life. Without this witness of the Holy Spirit, other things could be unreliable.
Some definite word from the Scripture will serve to deepen this convictions.
The word of God has been given for this very purpose.
Sometimes you find a Scripture leap on you as you read. Touching your heart about the Lord’s demand of your service. The Scripture is a great tool in this. After series of pondering of the new love and feelings I was having about God and his work. One day, Ezekiel 33:8 made sense to me like never before, it was my Scriptural confirmation for ministry.
As one is brought to realize the deep need of the unsaved and views them in the light of Scripture, the conviction is borne home to his soul of the dire necessity for them to hear the soul-emancipating Gospel. In 1986 we visited Atan Abam for some evangelistic meetings.
My heart moved for them that when I shared my feelings for the people with the missioary that led the team, he left me behind to minister to the people. We had great visitations of God that confirmed God was leading me to serve there, which I did.
God must first move compassionately in your heart before he will move among the people through you.
Let us not be-little this. These older believers have seen evidences of a gift for preaching in a Christian’s life and their words could be directed by the Lord to deepen your understanding of what He is doing with you.
Apparently this was one of the contributing elements of Timothy’s call to full time service.
The divine ordering of God’s providence,by which He makes His will clear through the circumstances of one’s life. God opens up a door of utterance at the right time, or perhaps closes a door of secular employment (Rev.3:8, l Cor.16:9).
One should take the step of going into full-time service for the Lord unless he has secured the warm-hearted approval, fellowship and commendations of the assembly of which he forms a part.
These might not finalize the list but is serves to give one a scale to weigh if he is called.
When God calls a man, He gives him a message to deliver. The present day imitiations and repetitions of men’s slogan is clearly an evidence of lack of call on some preachers. When he calls you He gives you a message that makes you unique and distinct among men
How boring it is to listen to a preacher who tells you “Papa said, Bishop so said” without telling you what God has sent him to say. Many preachers have become echoes of someone else instead of a voice. One of the great preachers of the New Testament told his inquirers that he is a voice. You can’t be a voice when you don’t have call for then you won’t have a message.
God will never empower what He never initiated. God releases power to each person according to the measure or content of His call. For whatever he wants you to do, He gives grace. It might seem a strange task that Moses will be able to confront Pharaoh and secure deliverance for Israel. Gideon fighting the Midianite might look like confronting a mountain with a loaf of bread.
How can three foreign slaves stand against the King of the land while fire has been made ready to consume them? To each situation there is a mighty display of divine omnipotence according to the purpose of his effectual calling upon each life.
In fact those called of God see more trouble both as tests to their stand and commitment and as opposition from the powers of darkness. The call does not guarantee a trouble free, persecution free and enemy free ministry. But it guarantees power to overcome in every situation. When you see a preacher that easily goes under in a storm, you’ve seen a preacher without a calling. But the call of God guarantees power to surf the waves of ministerial troubles.
Elijah would say “that they might know that you are God....and that I have done this things at your word...” Jesus could say when commissioning His disciples “...as my father has sent me...” The calling serves a ground of appeal to every minister. What a danger to go without it, you have nothing to hold God with. He said to Gideon, “...have I not sent thee?..” The preacher who have gotten His sending can also say to God “...have you not sent me?” when in danger and will have an answer. But not so with Him that is not called.
It might have many earthly sympathizers, but God would not sympathize with a wounded soldier that He did not commission. He will say concerning them. “...They run but I have not sent them...” God takes no responsibility over a minister He has not call. Every injury suffered in the course of executing a work you are not called for attracts no heavenly sympathy or intervention. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, saw the heavens opened and the Son of God standing (and I will say here sympathizing) at the right hand of God. He stood up to grant strength to Stephen. When a called person faces danger in the course of performing his place in God’s timetable, heaven rises to help, to encourage and to cheer.
As Stephen was going home to heaven, Jesus was up to welcome him. If Jesus was standing, I perceive the angels did. You can see a guard of honour mounted, a team of escort and a host of angels standing because a man called who fulfilled destiny was going home. He was moved because a called person was going home.
When a called person is in danger, heaven stands attention. But who bothers about an errand boy not called nor sent and who have no message to deliver.
God will not receive account of a man doing a work He never sent. In Matthew 25 He said to the servants “give account of your stewardship.” It is what He gives to a man that He requires account of.
Take for example; He made you a driver and coming to ask for how many people you carried, you went to pick an account book to report in an accountant position which He never gave you. That is failure; many a preacher today with thousands in their churches will have nothing to account for if they were not called to preach.
A minister not called is an errand boy not sent and without a message, a soldier not commissioned, and a steward without a trust committed to him. He has no results and so will have no account to render when the master returns. What a tragedy!
When God initiates a call, He anoints the preacher. Nothing works like anointing and without it the preacher is disqualified because mere rhetoric is not all the ministry of preaching requires. Jesus the Son of God was anointed of the Spirit and if He needed it, then we need it most. Luke 3:21-22 records how this came about and vs23 reads “Jesus, when he began his ministry.....” There is no ministry without the anointing for ministry begin when the anointing comes. This anointing is the ground and source of the preachers’ authority.
The power to overcome temptations, minister with authentic results is the product of anointing and any success in ministry not affected by the spirit is superficial. Donald Demaray agrees with this when he said: “There is no ministry much less the successful one coping with its peculiar, without the preparation that comes with God’s Spirit.”
It takes the anointing to identify a man, and it takes the anointed to locate and position a man. It was only after David was anointed that the King sent for him. Jesus only announced His mission after the anointing. “.....The Spirit of the Lord is upon me....” (Lk.4:18) He had the anointing not by measure. Every preacher should pay the price to be anointed or leave the pulpit. The release or Emptying of one’s self unto the Lord and the asking through prayers serve two first steps to this anointing.
It is dangerous to preach without the anointing, for without the spirit, the ministry of the word with mere rhetoric will be academicals, dull and without life; and such a ministry is unproductive. It is bereft of the effects which the ministry of the word should produce, for lack of anointing.
The minister full of the Holy Ghost is full of impact. He edifies the body of Christ and has the honour of executing the judgement written against the enemies of truth (Ps.147:10-11). This is the minister needed today and without the anointing he is completely disqualified.