A Minister's Calling

A person’s calling in life is never by accident.  Already the ultimate personal preparation will have come from God as he has shaped an individual’s life giving them the talents, life experiences and education that point the way to their ‘calling’ or vocation in life.  Some are called by God to teach school, take care of the sick, work with technology, manufacture or sell useful products, prepare good food, care for or teach children, perform scientific research, or provide wholesome entertainment and some are called to minister.  God has built a network of people and given each and every one of us exactly what talents, experiences and skills we need to be in it.

The calling to the ministry is a special type of calling.  Make no mistake, God chooses us for the ministry.  It is not our choice to be a minister.  It is His choice that we be a minister.  It is a job we cannot volunteer for and do well in unless God and His Holy Spirit are working with and through us.  Consequently there is an incredible amount of backing from God, His Holy Spirit and angels once God has chosen us.  The election is of God, the forming is of God, the sanctification is of God, the ordination is of God.  (We may think we chose but if it is not of God’s choosing it will not last.

One of the best Scriptures on the calling of God is from Jeremiah, chapter 1 verses 4 – 9 (NCV). It shows the essence of the call:

4 The Lord spoke his word to me, saying: 5 "Before I made you in your mother's womb, I chose you. Before you were born, I set you apart for a special work. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." 6 Then I said, "But Lord God, I don't know how to speak. I am only a boy." 7 But the Lord said to me, "Don't say, 'I am only a boy.' You must go everywhere I send you, and you must say everything I tell you to say. 8 Don't be afraid of anyone, because I am with you to protect you," says the Lord. 9 Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth. He said to me, "See, I am putting my words in your mouth. 10 Today I have put you in charge of nations and kingdoms. You will pull up and tear down, destroy and overthrow, build up and plant.

If you are called of God you feel absolutely helpless to satisfy this call, and you know you can only make it by a fresh supply of divine grace each day. When you are called, you know that you are absolutely dependent on God for everything.  The ministry can be the most difficult, dangerous, challenging and often heart-breaking work on the face of the earth. Yet I have to tell you that it can also be the most precious, holy, wonderful and high calling a human can have.  It is always a calling that you do regardless of earthly recompense. It is being available to God and his people twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

The fact that you are reading this indicates that you are probably a minister or officer of a church or that you are considering entering the ministry.  God calls us to use the talents we are given in some way that will glorify Him and contribute to the betterment of the people around us and the world in which we live.

When God calls a minister, He makes that minister. He does that by alternately heating and cooling him, by tempering him, by hammering away at him, by chiseling at him, by running sandpaper over him until he is what God wants him to be: devoid of all self-glory and self-seeking. If the minister is truly called of God he must be faithful in the furnace of affliction through much prayer and praise and dying. Then he will be molded into the likeness of the One who called him. That is God’s seminary. Man’s seminary puts things into a minister’s head, but God goes right for the heart. God still cries out as He did in days of old, “Oh, that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always….” (Deuteronomy 5:29) Oh, yes, it is one thing for a minister to be the product of an institution, it is altogether another for him to have been made a minister by GOD.  Reimar A.C. Schultze

It is not the mission of the CoIC to tell you what to do or how to conduct your ministry but rather it is (in following with our church mission statement) to empower you by offering ideas which may prove helpful as you carry out your God ordained ministry.  Let us all be so empowered through the Holy Spirit that there is no doubt that we are closely in touch with God and that we are like magnets drawing others nearer to Christ.