In this episode, the biblical process of discerning if you are called to be a missionary is discussed and practical application is given.
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Audio Transcript
Today I’m going to be talking to you about the missionary call. We’re going to be looking at a couple of passages of scripture, particularly the Great commission in Matthew 28. And we’re going to be looking at Romans 10 and what the book of Romans has to say about how people come to faith. And then we’re going to talk about what it means to be called into missions and what people should do about it if they’re called and what people should do about it if they’re not called into missions.
So a little bit about us. Our family moved overseas close to 10 years ago. We are living in one of the least reached places in the world. The country that we live in is one of the places that has the fewest believers. Per capita, it’s only about 1 in 20,000 people who believe the gospel.
So if you can just imagine, you know, if your church has a hundred people in it, you would be the only believers in a city of 2 million people. In the country in which we live, there are some people groups that are even less reached than the country as a whole. The people group that we specifically focus on is a people group that has only about one believer out of every 100,000 people. And today I’m going to talk about the missionary call or the call to missionary work. So we’re going to look at what is the call to missions, how to know you are called, Action steps for people who are called into missions and action steps for everyone else.
So first we’re going to look at two important passages, the Great Commission and Romans 10. So here’s the Great Commission, Matthew 28. Starting in verse 18, Jesus came near and said to them, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you, and remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.
So we see in the Great Commission that Jesus expects all believers to go into the nations, to go into all people groups in the world, to share the gospel with them and make disciples. So making disciples means you share the gospel with someone they believe, and then you teach them, you baptize them. And he expects believers to teach these new disciples everything that he commanded them. And he doesn’t just mean everything else that he commanded them to do. He means everything up to and including this command.
In other words, he expects all believers to go to share the gospel, to make disciples, and to teach them everything that he commands, including the command to go and make disciples. So in the past, some Christians argued that this was only for the apostles. But we clearly can see that Jesus is commanding them to go into all nations and tell them to go into all nations as well. The second passage that we’re going to look at real briefly is Romans 10. Starting in verse 13, we see in Romans 10, Paul is saying, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
How then can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent? So we see in Romans 10 sort of a chain of events.
If you work backwards from the order in which the passage explains things. You see a person is sent, and then they go and they preach the good news, the gospel. They go and share the gospel, and then people believe, they confess, and they are saved. Now, some people would say that this means God is sending people, that people are sent by God. And some people say that this verse is talking about the church sending people.
And I would tend to think that it’s a both, and here that we’re talking about God sending people. And God sends people primarily through the church. So it’s both God and the church sending a person to the nations who have not heard the good news of Jesus Christ, that Jesus died on the cross for their sins. They’re going and sharing that message. People believe and are saved.
That’s how it works. That is what missions means. And to be a missionary means to go and do that. So an important distinction that we should make before moving on is that while Jesus expects everybody to be involved in the Great Commission, it wouldn’t make sense for everybody to literally go to other nations to uproot their lives, to quit their jobs, to sell their homes and all their possessions, and go around the world to share the gospel with people over there. And if you think about it, if everybody did that, then there wouldn’t be any believers here where we live.
And then somebody would have to send somebody else to come share the gospel here. So that’s obviously absurd, but what it is saying is that everybody should be involved. So some people go and others send. So you have a church, and a church might have one person or a couple of people that God is calling to go, and the church sends those people and provides for those people and continues to support those people. So let’s real quickly define what it means to be called people who are Called to missions will have a special burden for lost people.
A special burden especially for lost people of other countries and other cultures. Maybe places like the one that we live in, that’s very lost. Statistically very few people are believers. You know, there are places in the world where most people go their whole lives without ever even meeting a Christian, let alone hearing the gospel. And it’s those places and those people groups in particular that need people to go and share.
So the call to missions, you should expect someone to have a unique or an above and beyond burden for these lost people, these lost nations. You should expect someone to have a sense of God’s leading. It doesn’t have to be anything supernatural. But if a person doesn’t think that God is leading them to missions, then maybe that means they’re not being called. You would expect some level of gifting or skills in cross cultural ministry or things that can be used in cross cultural ministry.
And you should expect that if somebody’s called into missions, that their local church would be able to recognize that, that the people who know them best would be able to confirm God’s call in their life. So how does a person know if they are called into missions? Well, here are four things that you can think through or things that you can do to determine if you are called into missions or not. Or really you can think through these things to determine what is it that I’m called to do? Am I called into overseas missions or cross cultural ministry, or am I called into some other kind of ministry or what is it that God wants me to do with my life?
So the four things are reading scripture, spending time in prayer, taking an inventory of your life and your situation, and getting wise counsel. So first off, Scripture, the Bible is the main way that God speaks to his people. I heard it said once that some people, it seems, would travel the world to find God’s will for their life, but they wouldn’t go over to the other room to read their Bible. And that is really crazy when you think about it, because God has spoken to us through His Word. And the Bible is the best way that we can get to know God and get to know what he is doing in the world.
So if you don’t understand the Bible, you won’t understand who God is and what he is doing in the world. But if you really know your Bible, you will know God’s mission in the world and it will be easier for you to know how you fit in that mission. So everybody should study their Bible, know their Bible well, and if you don’t know your Bible well, you should look for resources to do that in your church or online, ideally within your church. But you may want to also supplement that with Bible study tools online or something like that. Secondly, prayer.
Everybody who believes in the Gospel, believes that Jesus died on the cross for their sins, should be regularly engaged in prayer specifically for direction in their life. It may be that you already have felt like you’ve received direction in your life of where God wants you to be and what God wants you to be doing, but it’s still good to revisit that from time to time in prayer, asking God to give you wisdom for the next few years of your life or the next chapter of your life. The Bible in James 1, verse 5 says, now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly and. And it will be given to Him. So we know that God is a God who gives wisdom to those who ask.
So it’s good to ask for wisdom and direction, and that’s a good place to start. I want to say here too, that a lot of people pray for direction and then they wait for some sort of answer in the form of a miraculous sign. And while we know that God does sometimes work that way, it’s not the only way that he can give answers to prayers. And so I want to caution everyone against this kind of mystical waiting around for a miracle to show us that God wants us to do something specific when we know that God’s heart is to reach the unreached and that that is the mission that he has given the church. So it doesn’t require necessarily a miraculous sign, but you should be praying and looking for God’s leading by His Holy Spirit and through Scripture and through the local church.
Thirdly, things that people should be doing to determine am I called into missions or something else, you should take inventory of your life, take a look and just write out, what am I good at? What are my skills, either naturally speaking, like, am I a good communicator? Or what are my spiritual gifts? Am I a gifted evangelist, or do I have spiritual gifts in other areas?
And then look at that list of skills and strengths and spiritual gifts and say, like, how could these be used on the mission field? And is that a match for the task of overseas missions? Secondly, what are you passionate about? Are you passionate about reaching the lost with the gospel? Are you passionate about crossing cultures and getting to know people from other cultures and other countries and your circumstances?
You know, everybody is in a different situation in life. Everybody is at a different age, a different kind of position in life, so to speak. You know, some people are better situated to uproot their lives and move overseas. If you have a lot of debt, for example, that is a circumstance that may make it difficult for you to move overseas. If you have a health condition that requires a lot of medication or certain healthcare that may be limiting to you in your ability to go overseas, at least until the medical condition gets better.
You may have family needs that mean that the right thing for you to do is to stay where you are, to be close to your family, whether relatives or parents or something like that. So your circumstances surely should be a factor when you’re considering Am I called into missions? Because God doesn’t call people to missions without making it possible for them to go. And also, as you’re taking an inventory of your life, you should think about timing. It may be that God is giving you a strong desire now to be involved in missions or to go to the nations.
But it might mean that you have to wait, that he’s giving you the desire now so that you can be prepared five years from now, when the time is right, when you’ve paid off your debt, or when your medical condition gets better, when or when your kids go off to college, or when you retire even, it may be 20 years from now that the time is right. But timing is important as you’re taking inventory of your life and thinking am I called into missions? And am I called into missions now or at some point in the future? And finally, when you’re deciding, when you’re trying to discern God’s will for your life and trying to discern Am I called into missions? You should get wise counsel.
Proverbs 11:14 says, There is safety in having many advisors. And we know both from Scripture and just from common sense that it makes sense to bounce ideas off of other people and to not just make decisions on your own, but to make decisions within a community of people who are wise, people who are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, people who are hearing from God and getting wisdom from God also. And we know that God guides people through His Holy Spirit, and not just individually, but in community with one another. And so getting wise counsel from other people, particularly in your local church that you are integrally a part of, you should expect God to work through that, to give you wise counsel on whether you should be going to the mission field or not, and whether it should be now or sometime in the future.
And wise counsel can also Keep you from making emotional or impulsive sorts of decisions. So, moving on, what’s next for you if you are called into missions? So if you, after going through these different things, after reading the Bible and praying, taking inventory of your life and getting wise counsel, if you say yes, I think God is calling me into missions, what should you do next? Some of the first things you should do is you should decide on a place to go or a people group to focus on. And I would say my encouragement to people who are called into missions is to start first with the places with the greatest need.
Because there are a lot of places in the world where there just aren’t people witnessing and they’re very hard to reach places. That’s why they haven’t been reached up to this point. But when God calls people into missions, he isn’t just calling you to go from one church to another church where there are already Christians.
The idea is to go where there haven’t been people sharing the gospel. So you should decide on a place or a people group or maybe God has already laid on your heart a place or a people group that you know has a massive need. Next, if you think that God is calling you into missions, you should do a little bit of research into how you should go. There are organizations out there like missions organizations that you could be a part of and you should really think through. Is it wise to be a part of one of those or to go independent, more directly sent from your local church?
And you need to think about how you’re going to be financially supported during that time. Are you going to raise support through donations through your church or through an organization? Or are you going to go to the nations via a business? Are you going to start a business and use that as the means for you to stay in a place and provide for yourself and your family? A lot of the places in the world that are still very unreached at this point, the most viable way of reaching those places is by starting a business or going and being employed by a business in that country.
Because many of those places you can get into if you have a legitimate business that you’re a part of, but you can’t get in otherwise. And if you think you’re called into missions, you need to get training. This can be through an organization or through your church or on your own, but you need to get enough theological training that you will be able to not just share the basic bare bones gospel, but to disciple people and raise them up as healthy believers. You need training to be able to cross cultures, to be able to communicate, cross culturally so you’re not accidentally communicating the wrong things. You need to get training on how to learn a language or at least have an idea of, okay, when I get there, how am I going to learn the language?
And you should probably get training on security. Particularly in many parts of the world, it can be dangerous for people to come in. As a foreigner and, and especially if you’re trying to share the gospel with people, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can get yourself into dangerous situations. So you probably want to do some security training as well. So those are just some starting places for people who think that they’re called into missions.
And lastly, for those of you who are confident after reading scripture, praying, taking inventory of your life, getting wise counsel, if you’re confident that God is not calling you specifically to go to another place to cross the cultural barriers to share the gospel, then what action steps should you be taking to be a part of the Great Commission? Well, I have a couple of action steps for you as well. The first action step is prayer. One of the best ways that you can partner with people doing missions and to work alongside them, so to speak, is, is to pray. So if you are keeping up with how missionaries are doing, maybe people that you know who have gone overseas, you can pray with them and pray for them, pray for difficult things that they’re going through, and pray for the people around them that those people would receive the Gospel.
And you can pray for specific people, groups and countries that have great needs for the gospel. Secondly, you can look at your financial situation and say, you know, I’ve got this kind of amount of money that I’m saving that I could put towards supporting a missionary overseas or giving financially in some way to support the cause of the Great Commission. And that’s a major way that people who are not personally going can be a part of the Great Commission worldwide. Another way is to help with businesses. Like I said, many of the places in the world that are least reached can be best reached by sending people through business.
And some of the people who maybe don’t have the skills to cross cultures or don’t have the circumstances that make it wise for them to uproot their lives and go to a different country. Maybe God has given them the business skills and experience to be able to be a mentor for an entrepreneur who’s taking a business to a new culture in order to live there and be a witness for the gospel in a place that otherwise people don’t have access to the Gospel. So maybe you can help in some way through business, whether doing some of the busy work or taxes or setting up an LLC and managing that on the American side or whatever it is. Maybe there’s some way that you can help a missionary through business. And finally, one thing that you can do is in your local church, you could decide to research a topic and and share it with other people in your church.
A topic related to specific people groups or countries that have a great need. Because one of the ways that God calls people into missions is making them aware of the great need in the world. So maybe that’s one way that you could be a part of. The Great Commission is researching people, groups and nations and learning out what their needs are and sharing it with others. Or learning about opportunities for people to get theological training or training on cross cultural ministry, or learning language security.
You could learn about opportunities for those things and provide them for people that you know who are being called into missions. Another thing that you can do is to personally be involved in evangelism to your neighbors, to your co workers, and to encourage others to do the same. Because if you can develop your own ability to share the gospel and help others to develop their ability and experience in sharing the gospel, then that will help the church to be equipped to share the gospel or send people to share the gospel in other cultures. Finally, I want to leave you with one more verse from Romans Romans 15:20. Because it’s this verse that had an immense impact on my life as we were deciding to go overseas as a family.
Paul in this chapter is trying to get the church in Rome to get on board with him in his hopes of traveling to Rome, staying there for a while, and then getting their support to send him on to Spain, which had not been reached yet with the Gospel. Paul Sundays in Romans 15:20, my aim is to preach the gospel where Christ has not been named, so that I will not build on someone else’s foundation.
Paul’s ministry was going around and sharing the Gospel, proclaiming the gospel, telling people the good news that Jesus died on the cross for their sins, and basically starting churches in places where they had never been started before. And so as we close, I want everybody to think about their life and think about what am I doing with my life and what are the gifts and skills and circumstances that God has put me in and how can I be a part of this mission, this goal of getting the Gospel to all the corners of the earth that it hasn’t been taken to yet.