I Feel Called to Missions — Should I Date Someone Who Doesn’t?

00:00:00.000 | Today's question comes to us from a "slightly confused sister in the Lord."

00:00:11.000 | "Hello Pastor John, I was wondering if you could help me think through two questions.

00:00:14.680 | First, I have a deep burden and desire for missions as a calling.

00:00:19.040 | This is true of me and brings me a lot of joy.

00:00:21.600 | However, it also brings confusion, especially in dating.

00:00:25.320 | I feel guilty in fostering relationships with wonderful men who don't share my calling.

00:00:32.280 | Would I be in sin if I married a godly man who didn't share my calling to missions?

00:00:36.560 | Second, while I feel inspired to spread the gospel to unreached people, I don't feel

00:00:40.760 | called to minister in remote places.

00:00:42.440 | I'm much more drawn to international cities.

00:00:45.160 | I wonder if this helps alleviate the first question.

00:00:48.320 | In APJ 1422, you said, "Marriage is not fundamentally the linking of arms in the pursuit

00:00:54.820 | of an agreed-upon vocation."

00:00:58.560 | You seem to have a less restrictive view on calling.

00:01:02.520 | What thoughts can you offer to me as a woman who does not have the gift of singleness to

00:01:06.080 | think through missions and marriage?

00:01:09.840 | Last night, as I was thinking about this question, I asked my wise wife if she had any thoughts

00:01:18.760 | about it.

00:01:19.840 | I suppose it's because we've shared life for 52 years that the first thing that she

00:01:26.080 | said was the first thing that was coming to my mind as well.

00:01:31.400 | She said, "I suppose it hangs a lot on the seriousness and confidence about her calling

00:01:39.640 | to missions."

00:01:41.040 | As our young friend had said, "I have a deep burden and desire for missions as a calling."

00:01:49.720 | I think Noelle and I would say, "That's serious.

00:01:54.240 | You're right about that."

00:01:56.200 | She also said, "I feel guilty in fostering relationships with wonderful men who don't

00:02:04.160 | share my calling."

00:02:07.760 | So Noelle's first thought and my first thought was that however our young friend conceives

00:02:15.440 | of her calling or however she arrived at a sense of this calling, we don't want her

00:02:24.080 | to act against her conscience.

00:02:26.800 | We don't want her to sense a deep burden and desire and even leading from God only

00:02:35.240 | to forsake that burden and desire and leading for the sake of a marriage relationship.

00:02:42.440 | It's always dangerous to act against your conscience, even if your conscience is not

00:02:49.040 | infallible as a guide for God's will.

00:02:53.960 | Now it's true that the Bible portrays marriage as a good and beautiful and even normative

00:03:05.640 | pattern for men and women in this world that God created.

00:03:12.360 | The Bible begins at the very beginning of Genesis by creating, God creating, human beings

00:03:21.320 | as male and female and saying that it's not good for a man to be alone.

00:03:27.780 | In other words, marriage is the normal way that God has planned for the human race to

00:03:33.480 | fill the earth for his glory and a man-woman relationship is the normal and good and beautiful

00:03:42.600 | way that God aims for the human soul to experience the kind of togetherness that we all long

00:03:51.040 | for.

00:03:52.040 | But, and I put a big exclamation point after this, but, but with the fall of the world

00:04:00.600 | into sin and the disruption of the normal course of created life and the horrible lostness

00:04:10.320 | of the human race and the urgency of rescuing people from eternal destruction with the inbreaking

00:04:19.380 | of the age to come with Jesus Christ, an age which will have no marriage and no giving

00:04:27.460 | in marriage, Jesus said, with all of that, it would be wrong, be wrong for me to say

00:04:34.480 | that marriage is a mandate from God for all his children because the inbreaking, the breaking

00:04:43.720 | in of the kingdom may in fact call for a self-denial even of marriage and children for the sake

00:04:55.120 | of more pressing kingdom purposes.

00:04:58.940 | This was certainly true for Jesus and it was true for Paul.

00:05:04.520 | Neither of them married.

00:05:06.920 | Paul blessed marriage, but he also exalted singleness for the sake of the kingdom.

00:05:13.840 | To all that to say that our friend who asked this question has more than one door open

00:05:22.640 | to her in the Bible.

00:05:25.260 | Both doors, the one leading to the path of marriage for the glory of Christ and the other

00:05:31.360 | leading to the path of singleness for the glory of Christ are both biblically legitimate

00:05:39.320 | and can yield a beautiful and fruitful Christ-exalting life.

00:05:46.840 | I think if I were having a personal face-to-face conversation with this young woman, I would

00:05:53.040 | want to take the approach that I have so often taken with people when they present me with

00:06:00.000 | either or dilemmas, both paths of which seem bad.

00:06:06.200 | I would want to say that God, precisely because he is God and not man, is never boxed in in

00:06:16.880 | the way we think we are between two options, both of which feel disappointing.

00:06:22.040 | In her case, one option would be marry a man who doesn't share her mission passion and

00:06:27.880 | be disappointed about her calling, and the other option would be stay true to your missionary

00:06:33.520 | calling and be disappointed that you forego marriage.

00:06:37.080 | And I would want to say, don't think that way.

00:06:41.560 | God is God, and there are more options than you know.

00:06:47.320 | God may have a third way for you.

00:06:49.480 | And this is exactly the direction that Noelle's thoughts were taking when we talked last night.

00:06:56.120 | Noelle has given a good deal of time thinking about single women missionaries and interacting

00:07:02.400 | with young women.

00:07:03.400 | She's written about these things in her book, Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God,

00:07:08.320 | and she reminded me of a story.

00:07:11.140 | It was at one of our Desiring God national conferences, and at the end of one of the

00:07:16.760 | sessions, two single women who were pondering missions engaged Noelle in the hall outside

00:07:25.640 | where the session was about this very dilemma.

00:07:30.800 | Should I wait to find a husband before I go to the mission field, or should I go and perhaps

00:07:37.440 | never find a husband?

00:07:40.200 | And Noelle pointed out to me now 20 years later that the young woman who went to Pakistan

00:07:47.760 | as a single woman found her husband there, which seemed absolutely crazy, impossible.

00:07:53.200 | That's not going to happen in Pakistan.

00:07:56.360 | And the woman who stayed is still single.

00:07:59.520 | And I'm not saying, "Oh, don't hear me say that the woman who stayed was disobedient."

00:08:05.440 | That is not the case at all.

00:08:06.920 | She's living a productive, Christ-exalting life right now.

00:08:12.520 | But I smiled when I heard that story that Noelle recounted, because the way I was going

00:08:19.480 | to put it is this, the best place to find a like-minded husband or wife is precisely

00:08:29.040 | on the path of your missionary calling.

00:08:33.080 | That's the best place.

00:08:34.080 | In other words, the third possibility is to follow your sense of God's leading toward

00:08:42.160 | missions with a patient trust that if you indeed don't have the gift of singleness,

00:08:50.480 | if you would dishonor God by singleness, God will lead you to a like-minded spouse, even

00:08:58.000 | when you think it looks absolutely impossible.

00:09:01.920 | Last December at the Cross Conference, the missionary conference for 18 to 25-year-olds,

00:09:09.080 | one of the panel participants who leads a pretty rigorous missionary preparation ministry

00:09:14.960 | said in all seriousness, standing on the platform with David Platt, that—he was not joking—"Many

00:09:23.200 | of the single men and women who come to our training find their spouses there."

00:09:29.240 | Now it's easy to joke about that and to joke, say, about Christian colleges being matchmaking

00:09:37.640 | institutions.

00:09:39.880 | Well, how fitting and beautiful and appropriate and wonderful is it that the place a person

00:09:48.520 | finds a like-minded husband or wife is precisely on the path where you're doing what you

00:09:54.560 | believe God called you to do, for goodness sakes.

00:09:57.760 | That may be getting a solid Christ-centered education in a college, for living a God-centered

00:10:03.760 | life.

00:10:04.760 | That may be a place to find a spouse, or it may be missionary training or a missionary

00:10:11.280 | life in a place where you think, "There's no way I'm going to find a spouse out there.

00:10:17.120 | Pakistan, for goodness sakes."

00:10:20.080 | Look, he's God.

00:10:22.160 | He's God.

00:10:23.400 | It's just like God to bless his mission-minded followers with the desires of their heart.

00:10:32.360 | God knows what we need.

00:10:34.160 | God is good.

00:10:35.160 | God is wise.

00:10:36.160 | God is sovereign.

00:10:37.960 | God is able to do what seems impossible for man to do.

00:10:43.000 | So I return to my wife's first thought.

00:10:46.720 | How serious and how deep and how confident is this sense of calling in this young woman?

00:10:56.640 | Because if it is serious and deep, then probably she should set her face, her heart, to pursue

00:11:06.520 | it, and trust God that on that path she will find her greatest joy and do the world the

00:11:15.320 | greatest good and bring Christ the greatest honor.

00:11:20.200 | Wonderful.

00:11:21.200 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:11:23.000 | And thank you, Noel, for pointing out those stories as well.

00:11:26.000 | We appreciate her wisdom here on the podcast.

00:11:29.080 | And thank you for listening.

00:11:30.160 | As we see in this episode today, many topics we address on this podcast provoke new questions

00:11:35.440 | that also need to be asked and answered.

00:11:37.040 | And if you have a follow-up question, get those questions to us at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:11:40.720 | You'll see a button for submitting a question, which opens up a new email.

00:11:47.280 | And we appreciate it a lot, all of the emails that come to us.

00:11:49.680 | I know we get to answer so few of them, but we appreciate all of them.

00:11:53.120 | Well, in our fight against sin, do we focus our attention on Christ, or do we focus our

00:11:57.880 | attention on ourselves?

00:11:59.360 | Who do we focus on?

00:12:01.120 | It's a very tangible question from a listener.

00:12:04.240 | And it's the next question on the docket for Monday.

00:12:07.120 | I'm Tony Reinke.

00:12:08.120 | Thank you for listening to the podcast, and have a wonderful weekend.

00:12:11.280 | [END]

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I Feel Called to Missions — Should I Date Someone Who Doesn’t?

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