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By Glenn Goodwin
How does a young man or woman know that
the hand of God is on them for a special work or ministry?
What should they do if they think it is?
A calling of God to any work is this life’s
greatest honor. Whether that calling is to be in the
ministry, to work as a pastor’s wife, to a music ministry,
to serve as an usher or usherette, to be an evangelist, or
whatever work the Lord has called you to do.
You should begin preparing
yourself for God’s work as soon as you suspect the hand of
God is upon you for the future – even if you are not sure
what that exact calling is for.
That does not mean develop your talent to
the exclusion of the more important things. If you are
called to preach, you could develop your preaching style –
without developing a relationship with Jesus Christ. You
would be a spiritual failure. I have known people who could
preach, and move the crowd, but they did not have the deep,
abiding contact with the Lord that they needed for
themselves. The first task for any called man or woman is to
save yourself. If your preaching, or music, or other
ministry is a tremendous blessing to others, but you die
lost, I consider you to be a failure. If you know as a
teenager that God has given you a musical talent, don’t
concentrate on that talent exclusively, determining to be
the best musician the body of Christ has ever seen. There
are other areas that you must work on, too.
There are several steps that I can recommend
that you implement, in this order:
Make your calling sure.
You may think that God has called you for a
work. Sometimes it is not easy to be sure. Satan will try to
make you doubt your calling. Many are afraid that they may
be called. But one thing is sure, if God has called you, He
will let you know.
Moses’ calling, from a burning bush, was
unmistakable. So was Samuel’s calling with the audible voice
of God. The Bible is filled with biographies of men and
women whom God called to do a special work for Him. In every
case, God moved on the person; they did not choose that
vocation as a personal choice.
Working for God is hard. There are pressures
unimaginable. Ask the song leader in your church if serving
in that position in a church like this is easy, or always
fun and exciting. Ask the pastor’s wife if serving as a
minister’s wife is a life of ease and comfort.
Going into any ministry is not just a career
choice. There are unreasonable demands placed on you, there
are concepts that are hard to grasp and decisions that are
difficult to make, and success – at least as measured by
earthly standards – is virtually impossible to achieve. In
this work, you will not be laboring for the praise of man,
but the approval of God. Only eternity will reveal the
result of your service.
If God has not called you to the work you
want to do, I guarantee you that you will be miserable, will
make others miserable, and will not stay with it very long.
But if God has called you, and you try to do anything else,
you will be even more miserable – just ask Jonah.
Pray and consider. Is God preparing you for
a lifelong work for Him and His people? You need to know
that He has called you. You may doubt your abilities – like
Moses did – but neither you nor Moses should be able to
doubt your calling of God. It may be only a still, small
voice in your head, but there must be some way that you are
aware that God is calling you.
I have always known that the Lord has been
working in my life to prepare me for a ministry. I did not
know exactly where or how, and I did not anticipate being
the pastor of this church in Des Moines, but I knew that
there was some work that I was to do for God.
Get your spirit right.
If God has called you, then the single most
important thing that you can ever do to prepare is to get
your spirit right. Bro. Lloyd Goodwin kept saying, “Your
spirit is everything.” You may have the greatest oratorical
skills, or overwhelming musical talent and ability, but if
your spirit is wrong, God cannot bless your ministry.
According to Isaiah 66:2, the Lord looks to
bless those who have a humble, contrite spirit and who
tremble at His word. James 4:6 says that God resists the
proud, but gives grace to the humble. Wisdom teaches that he
that has no rule over his spirit is defenseless. Proverbs
25:28. Also, the Lord hates arrogancy and a froward mouth.
Proverbs 8:13.
God does not need the gifted and the
talented. Your great skills and abilities do not impress
Him. No one will ever be a success in any ministry with the
wrong spirit. God asks for a broken and contrite spirit – He
supplies the rest. Psalms 51:17.
Work on your spirit. What makes you angry,
or jealous, or stirs you to bitterness? Isolate the
provocation, ask God for help, and get that monster under
control. “Wisdom hath killed her beasts.” Proverbs 9:2. You
have more than one beast to slay before God can really use
you. If you cannot master your carnal spirit, you cannot be
effective in the work of the Lord.
Consecrate your life.
If you are going to work for God, then you
must be consecrated to Him – fully. Consecrate means to
declare holy, to set apart for a godly purpose, to dedicate
to the Lord. The Hebrew word is “qadash” (kaw-dash'), which
means “to be (causatively, make, pronounce or observe as)
clean (ceremonially or morally): — appoint, bid, consecrate,
dedicate, hallow, (be, keep) holy(-er, place), keep,
prepare, proclaim, purify, sanctify(-ied one, self),
wholly.”
Bro. Lloyd Goodwin preached a message on
being gifted, but not godly. Most of all, be godly. Pray.
Pray more. Pray sincerely; and not just by rote. Draw nigh
unto God and He will draw nigh unto you. James 4:8.
If you do not have a vibrant devotional
life, your service will become perfunctory and you will be
unable to minister life to others. If you are not saved, how
can you save others? Paul told a young preacher to take heed
unto thyself (first), to save yourself and them that
hear you. I Timothy 4:16.
Read the Bible for yourself; and not in a
search for something to preach about or use in a testimony.
Private devotions are critical to your success in any
ministry.
Some people feel that they don’t have time
to pray, to meditate, or to read God’s Word. I tell you that
you don’t have time not to. I have heard of a minister who
usually spent one whole hour in prayer every day. One day he
said he had so much to accomplish that day that he needed to
spend two hours in prayer.
Make time for prayer. What you have to do
will always expand to fill all of your available time. If
you wait for time to pray, that time will never materialize.
You must force prayer time into your very busy schedule. How
can you hope to represent the Lord in any ministry if you
never talk with Him?
Fasting is another part of the consecrated
life. Even as a young person, you can fast – abstaining from
food, or even abstaining from other pleasures of life for
devotional purposes. I Corinthians 7:5 speaks of husbands
and wives consenting to abstain from pleasure for a time to
give themselves to prayer and fasting. Daniel 9:3 is a good
example of a man seeking God with prayer and fasting.
Have daily devotions in your
life. You love the Lord, so commune with Him. You cannot be
a success in Him without consecrating to Him. This is far
more important than your preaching skills or your musical
ability or your witnessing to the lost.
Learn to lead by serving.
If you believe God may be pointing you in a
direction to be a leader of His people, as a minister,
minister’s wife, or church activity director, then you
really need to spend a lot of time serving. Elisha learned
to lead by serving Elijah. Jesus trained the 12 by making
them ushers, waiters, garbage collectors, and errand boys.
See Mark 6:35-44; Matthew 21:2.
Our Lord and Master served; we ought to
serve. John 13:14. The Apostle Paul told the church that
they were to serve one another in love. Galatians 5:13.
Serving puts discipline in your life, and
helps you to develop the “people skills” you need to work
with others in the service of the Lord. As a leader, you
should never ask people to do anything you would not be
willing to do yourself. The best generals are those who
know what it is like to be in the trenches.
If a sister is ever to be used by God, I
recommend that she volunteer to work in the church nursery
and the church school. Learn how to get along with parents
who are very touchy about their children. Learn how hard it
is to enforce the rules uniformly, without special favors to
some, and not others. Learn what it means to be firm, yet
fair.
Any sister with a sense of God’s calling on
her life should volunteer to work in other departments – the
kitchen, the dining room, the library, the cleaning crew, or
some other department. Get to know saints of God. See that
they have weaknesses, and they also have strengths. Learn to
appreciate others. Learn how to overlook mistakes and
problems for the greater good of the project. Learn how to
take it when others grind on your spirit.
Brothers, volunteer to usher or work on the
grounds. Or play in the band. Learn to live by the rules,
even though you don’t understand them, or don’t even agree
with them. Throughout life, you will find yourself not
agreeing with the rules. Even many secular employers have a
dress code – limiting makeup, jewelry, etc. In the church
band, we have rules about appearance and attire. Obey the
rules, even if you don’t agree with them – it will work
something good into your spirit.
Volunteering to serve is the best training
for eventual leadership. If we had a full-time on-campus
Bible School, where students came and spent two years
studying God’s Word, I would make it mandatory that Bible
students clean the church, work on the yard, etc. This is
not because we want slave labor, but I truly believe that
God can use someone who humbles themselves enough to clean
the restrooms, or mow the grass. If someone wants to be a
pastor, and expects others to volunteer to work in his
church, he needs the background and experience of having
worked in someone else’s church.
Live right.
You cannot be effective in serving the Lord
without having developed Christian character. There is a
type in the book of Leviticus that applies to anyone who is
going to be of service to the Lord. According to Leviticus
21:17-20, no priest could minister to the Lord if he was
blemished, or had a crookback. The type means that anyone
who ministers must have a life that is not too badly
blemished by scandal, and their background must not be too
corrupt.
To be effective, you must maintain your
integrity. That word, integrity, is overused in modern
society, but its Hebrew root means to be whole, sound,
unimpaired. Proverbs 14:34 says that sin is a reproach to
any people. To be of service to the King, your private life
must be as clean as your public appearance.
Integrity is the absence of duplicity and
hypocrisy. Duplicity is lying to yourself; hypocrisy is
lying to others. Doctors can be successful, even if they
have a character flaw; so can lawyers, politicians,
engineers, businessmen, factory workers, and just about
anyone else. But Christian workers cannot successfully
represent their Lord if they have a glaring character flaw.
You may be able to dazzle people with your
oratorical skills, impress them with your intelligence and
knowledge, leave them breathless over your talents and
skills, and charm them with your pleasing personality; but
if they doubt your moral integrity, you cannot minister to
them. I know people that reject anything great preachers
have said and done, because they perceive that the man was
morally flawed.
Notice that in I Timothy 3:2-12, nearly
every requirement for elders, deacons, and their wives,
pertain to their character. James 3:11 states that you
cannot minister life while living death.
Some have failed, but have been restored.
Grace is amazing. However, I cannot think of anyone, in the
Bible or in my personal knowledge, who reached as high a
level of effectiveness and as powerful a ministry after
their significant moral sins found them out, as they had
before. Your life before God called you may be another
matter, but once you represent Him, you cannot rise above a
major moral or ethical failing. (I am not referring to sins
that are common to all, and that we are all striving to
overcome. I refer to adultery, to misuse of church finances,
to scandalous conduct.)
Your ministry does not exist in a vacuum.
Your gift of God is not separate from your character and
moral fiber. II Corinthians 6:3 says, “Giving no offence in
any thing, that the ministry be not blamed.” That is the
issue: Will you live your life in such a morally upright
manner that the ministry isn’t blamed for your indiscretions
and glaring moral failures.
Study and prepare.
Finally, after having done all the other
steps, you must study and prepare for the ministry God has
called you to. I did not know that I would be pastor of this
church, but I spent many years in serious Bible study, from
the time I was 10 or 11 years old.
If you think God has given you a musical
talent, practice, study, and develop that talent. But that
is not the primary responsibility you have. Do not become
talented but temperamental. Do not let ability fuel
arrogance. II Timothy 2:15 admonishes to study to be
approved, and rightly divide the truth. Spend time pondering
the good things of God. I Timothy 4:15 says to meditate on
these things, give yourself wholly to them.
Whatever future God has for you, you should
be preparing now. If your future is to work in a music
ministry, then practice and learn all you can about music –
paying special attention to what pleases God. If God has
called you to witness to the lost, then develop a positive
approach and learn the techniques that might succeed. “He
that winneth souls is wise.” Proverbs 11:30.
Whatever ministry God has called you to, you
should be the best you can possibly be at it. That requires
discipline, and hard work. But the Lord Jesus Christ
deserves it. You cannot get away with burying your talent in
a napkin. You are to use your talents for the Master.
Begin spiritual exercise.
The Lord does not take you, completely
unprepared and oblivious, and “presto-chango” transform you
into a mighty preacher or gospel worker. (I am not talking
about conversion, and living a transformed life.) Usually,
He takes you through experiences and situations that prepare
you to be of service to Him. Not every experience is
pleasant, but every experience is carefully crafted by a
loving Savior, and filtered through a heart of love, before
it reaches you. God is in control of every situation.
If the calling of God is on you to preach,
then by all means preach. Stand up and speak up, in support
of the message your pastor has just preached. You may one
day need brothers to back up your messages, so learn how to
back up the messages of others. This does not mean that you
need to preach lengthy, involved sermons. Start with short
talks that support the theme of the service, or give an
illustration or testimony that fits in the service. If you
have been called to evangelize, then start witnessing. Bring
visitors to the church services.
If you feel called to be a song leader,
begin to notice song line-ups. What choruses go together?
What songs does God bless? Which ones does God not bless?
Why not? When should slow songs be sung? When should fast
songs be used? Be a keen observer, and a learner. You may be
called on to use that knowledge someday.
In the human body, muscles grow stronger
through exercise. I Timothy 4:8 tells us that “bodily
exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto
all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of
that which is to come.” The prior verse admonishes to
“exercise thyself rather unto godliness.” Begin to exercise
your spiritual talents, so you will be ready whenever, if
ever, God calls you to a greater work.
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