(upbeat music) - We get so many questions from listeners who are wondering about God's calling for their lives. Who should I marry? What field should I pursue in school? What job should I take? Where should I live in a course? Where should I be serving in ministry? Glenn, one such listener, asks, "Pastor John, how do I know if the Holy Spirit "is calling me to international missions?" What would you say?

- Let me start by saying that's the right question. And the reason I say that is because a student just asked me two days ago whether I agreed with Hudson Taylor's comment that no one needs a call to go into missions, but only a call to stay. Everyone should be planning to go to the unreached peoples and then God may stop you and call you to stay.

And I said to the student, "I don't agree with that. "I don't think that's the biblical pattern. "It may have some things to commend it "in terms of compassion and proportion, "and we should listen to those things, "but biblically, I can't support it." Regularly, God called his prophets, not the other way around.

And God does not say that men should all plan to be pastors unless they're called not to be pastors or elders. Rather, he sets up patterns of assessment and assumes that relatively few, just the needed number, will be led into the office of pastor, teacher, elder, shepherd. And Paul writes to the Romans to solicit their support in his mission to Spain, and he doesn't say a word about anyone in Rome going with him.

And all the epistles of the New Testament are written with the explicit or implicit assumption people stay right where they are, salt and light in their present vocations, like Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7.20, each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. So that's the right question.

That was my point. Glenn is asking the right question. So let's start with Romans 12.2. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. So discerning the will of God assumes a renewed mind.

I am assuming that the will of God here refers not to commandments of Scripture, which you don't need a renewed mind to read and know. Like, "Thou shalt not kill." You don't need a renewed mind to know that's against the will of God. I'm assuming that what Paul is talking about in Romans 12.2 is how do biblical teachings and all the other relevant factors conspire to produce a direction for my life that God approves and will bless.

Which leads now to a second thing. That renewal comes mainly through the Word of God and prayer. So when it says be renewed in your mind, I think he means soak your mind, marinate your mind, saturate your mind with the Word of God. The Christian mind is shaped by the Word of God, all the while praying, praying, praying.

Oh God, shape me. Oh God, make me. Oh God, bring me into conformity to this Word at the depths of my being. Now, out of that renewed mind and that prayerful experience, what the mind does to discern a call to missions is to take seriously about seven things. Number one, the renewed mind takes seriously your spiritual gifts.

What are they? God is not calling you to do something he has not gifted you to do. What's the gifting? And I think gifting that Paul and Peter have in mind is summed up in 1 Peter 4.10. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace.

That's what gifts are. Varied grace incarnate in human personalities, which we steward for the good of others. Do you know how God is gifting you in this way? Number two, the renewed mind takes seriously the needs that you see in the world and the ones that move you most deeply.

I wonder if we have thought enough about the implications of what Paul says in Romans 12, six to eight, when he's talking about gifts. He says, "The one who exhorts, let him do it with exhortation. The one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness." Now, every Christian is supposed to exhort.

Every Christian is supposed to be generous. Every Christian is supposed to show mercy. And yet, Paul treats those three things as gifts. And it seems to me that this would imply that some people would study a cluster of needs in the world, a people group, a crisis situation, and a very special God-given compassion or mercy or generosity or bent to give would be imparted to that person.

And it would constitute a very significant component of a person's calling. So take seriously not just the objective real needs that you are looking at in the world, in the lostness and the hurt of people, but how does that affect you? How does it affect you? And then study that in relation to Romans 12, 8, where one who does acts of mercy is to do it with cheerfulness, as though there is some special mercifulness that God gives to some people and some special compassion that he gives to some people for missions.

Number three, the renewed mind takes seriously its skills. And by this, I'm not thinking mainly of spiritual gifts, and they may overlap, but practical skills that God may put to use in a special way in some context, like with finances or carpentry or organization or dozens of possible abilities that may flourish, especially helpful way on the mission field.

Number four, the renewed mind takes seriously recurrent and growing interest and awareness of a place or a people. When God is moving someone into missions, he is ordinarily giving them a recurring, not just a flash in the pan, but a recurring and growing interest and awareness of a need he's leading them to.

So my question for people is, what are you reading about? What are you investigating? What do you return to again and again? What are you finding compelling as you ponder the needs of the world? Number five, the renewed mind takes seriously the growing desire of the heart for the work of missions.

So desire. 1 Timothy 3, one says that elders are to aspire to and desire the work of the ministry. And I take that as a principle that God uses to draw us into his work. Do you find this work desirable? Is your desire growing? Is it reaching the point of irresistibility?

That's what happened for me on October 14, 1979, when I was struggling with whether to stay a professor at a college or whether to be a pastor. And all I knew to say was that at about midnight that night, it became irresistible after years of brewing. Number six, the renewed mind takes seriously the affirmation and confirmation of the local church.

It's essential that you be part of a local church. This is the normal way of being a Christian. And it's the only way I know anybody who could go to the mission field and know what to do once he got there if he weren't experienced in a local church, 'cause it's churches that we want to come into being so that believers have a way to be discipled there.

And part of the experience of the local church is to confirm our gifts and confirm our desires and confirm our skills and confirm our compassion. And without that confirmation, we will tend to be loners who can very easily mistake God's leading. And the last thing I would say is the renewed mind wants to glorify God above everything.

We want to see the glory of God celebrated in the world. And so in all of these things, are we pursuing the glory of God? Do we see what I'm being led to as what will glorify God most? So immerse yourself in the word, pray without ceasing, take these seven factors seriously, and the effect I think will be that you'll know eventually.

Amen, thank you, Pastor John. And if you are called to missions, where should you start? This was the focus of episode number 236 in the podcast. It's titled, "I May Be Called to Missions, "Where Do I Start?" Find that episode and keep up with the daily Ask Pastor John podcast online or through our apps for more.

Go to our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well, as Christians, we all long for the day when we enter into God's city, where we will dwell with him forever. Of course, it will have no temple, for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb will shine like the noonday sun.

So what does it mean to live in God's presence right now? And how do I know if I'm living in God's presence right now? It's a good question, and we will address it. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. (silence) (silence) (silence)