The Missionary Call

I had one of those conversations with my dad this weekend that I will remember for a long time. A few weeks ago, I expressed some of the ways that God has been dealing with me recently and asked him to be praying for me. If you don’t know, I want to hold my career, job, life plans loosely in my hands, so that God can use me however He wants. My heart has been moved over the past few years to missions/ministry of some kind, but I am just not sure exactly what God is doing with that yet. So I asked my dad and others to be praying with me about it.

So Saturday dad pulled me outside to sit under the shade tree and talk African style. He shared with me his experience of being called to the ministry. 17 years old, plans to head to A&M and be an engineer, God definitively called Him to full-time ministry through a series of events, talking to his parents about it and them being a little uncertain about it, heading to Baylor instead, thinking that his ministry would be teaching Greek, but God called him ultimately to be a pastor and lead people to Jesus. He expressed many things, but a few things really stuck out to me:

It was a definitive call, but not specific necessarily. I have wrestled with the necessity for a specific ‘call’ and it helped to hear that God’s call in His life was definitive but not necessarily neatly lain out. God did not exactly say, ‘I call you to be a pastor in Seymour, Post, then Huntington for so many years…’ God called dad to Himself and to serve Him. I don’t know that I have had that one moment where I heard God call me, but it has been a growing ache in my heart over the past few years. As my view of God has gotten bigger and more correct, as I have seen the world more and more, as I have grown and been challenged in my faith God has put the desire within me to serve Him with my whole life, which is the way it should be. I do have a definitive call to serve God (and I believe that all regenerate believers do as well, but we won’t debate that here), but do not know what the specifics are, and that’s ok.

Parents not understanding. His parents, and others around him, did not necessarily understand what God was doing. They did not necessarily see that happening. They did not necessarily want that to happen, but dad knew that he must obey what God had told him. Thankfully, my grandparents trusted him and allowed him to follow God, even though they might have wanted different things for their son. My PaPa spoke some profound words at my dad’s 40^th birthday party. ‘Darryl could have done anything he wanted to do with his life, but he chose to be a pastor and love people instead.’ He may have been being a little sarcastic, but was emotional as well, because he saw how his son loved Jesus more than achieving great things with his life.

God revealed His will in time as dad was walking the call out in faith. God did not lay out exactly how it was supposed to happen to dad immediately, but instead wanted dad to trust that He was working it out for His purposes and dad’s good. That is the essence of walking by faith. God wanted dad to walk with Him no matter where he went and wanted to grow the relationship that God had begun years earlier.

After dad told me all of this he told me how he has been praying hard for me since our last conversation. Through his prayers, God had told dad that he needed to ‘let Byron go’. Dad said that it was not a quick obedience, because it is hard to let your son go. But dad told me, ‘We release you. We release you from feeling like you must achieve what you might think we want you to. We release you to go and follow God wherever he leads. We’ll still be here and will be with you, but we release you to do what you need to do. You are no longer bound to our wants and desires, but are free to follow God.’ Wow. Talk about being moved. What a freeing thing to know that my parents are for me, but also want more for me than just to satisfy them. They want me and have freed me to follow God, which is the greatest thing they could do for me.

Dad also just affirmed me as well. He said, ‘You have the skills, talents, gifts and abilities to do whatever you want in life. And I don’t say that to everyone.’ He sees more in me than I see in myself. Not that God needs talented, gifted people to achieve His purposes, because He uses the weak things of this world to shame the wise and strong. But what a feeling to know that my dad thinks that I can achieve anything that I set my mind to, whether that be owning an oil company or being a martyr for Christ. Wow.

So we talked about what it might look like for me to follow Jesus into ministry/missions. We talked specifics and generalities, but definitely did not come up with the plan or answer. We just talked, and that was a beautiful thing.

Some thoughts on following Jesus into missions/ministry:

Being a missionary/full-time minister is so much more than going to other countries, it’s about being a name bearer, a faithful witness to the gospel, and opening your mouth to talk about Jesus every day, no matter where you find yourself. It is so important to know that a call starts right now and not one day if I get overseas.

I go back and forth often about what God’s call means specifically and how it will work itself out. One minute I think that is as a full-time missionary to some tribe in Africa, the next minute I think it is to be faithful witness at Chevron. Other times I think about how God could use Chevron as a platform to get me overseas fully supported. Then I throw in the fact that I desire to be married and have a family and I wonder how all that will fit in. Will my wife feel the same call? How would it all work? The fact of the matter is that there are too many questions and unknowns. I have to focus on Exodus 33:12-23 – praying that I would only go where the Spirit leads, praying that I would faithfully serve no matter where I am, and praying that I would know God more and more every day.