“How do I know if God is calling me to the mission field?”

I just spent this last week talking to over 50 college age students at Hume Lake’s Joshua Project. Among 18-22 year old Christian students, this is not a new question, and neither is it a minor one. With the students I spoke with last week, this question was on the minds of most of them. They are leaving in a just a few days to go to Dominican Republic for a two-week outreach with us. Many of them have a strong desire to serve the Lord by meeting the needs of the poor around the world. Does that constitute a “call” to the mission field? Should they take a conventional career track or radically head to the jungle? But this might be the wrong question. It doesn’t have to be either/or.

In my final message with them as we unpacked Jesus’ Great Commission, we saw that the call to go is for all of us. Jesus said “go and make disciples of all nations…” In reality, because we are all “called,” we need to be looking for a specific call to stay. And if we do stay, aren’t we still called to go to our neighbors? We are called to our friends across the street, in the workplace, in our schools and to the poor in and around our communities. God calls us to go. We must be available. One illustration of the appropriate response to God’s call is found in Isaiah 6. God generally called out, “Who will I send?” and Isaiah heartily responded, “Here I am, send me.” May we take Isaiah’s example and live it out in our lives today.

Dave