By Carla Williams
Missionaries are normal Christians. They struggle with temptation. Their families are flawed, and they don’t always wake up with a smile on their faces and a song in their hearts. But missionaries are normal Christians who had a moment of faithful obedience.
God uses different circumstances and situations to draw his followers into his plans for the nations. He leads his people, but each person chooses how to respond. He calls some who decide to disregard his voice. For others, thankfully, the choice is to step out in trust.
Some believers don’t know if they’ve been called to go, because they aren’t sure what that even means. One way to explore the call is to look at how God has led others to cross-cultural ministry.
Lifelong Ambition
Many people have early childhood interactions with a visiting missionary or grew up as the children of missionaries. These experiences stay with them for years, and they find themselves interested in missions, geography, or other cultures.
One Team Expansion missionary remembers an early encounter. “We had a lady missionary speaker at church, and she showed pictures as she shared. I really felt God’s call from that point on, never turning back or knowing how that would work out.”
For another worker, missions was her obsession from a very early age. “I was totally convinced, actually from the time I was baptized, that what else would, could, or should I want to do with my life except somehow work in full-time Christian service.”
These stories are inspiring tales of a lifetime of focus and dedication, but most people don’t experience such clarity in their call. For most, the process requires a few more steps.
Clear Direction
When we seek direction from God, we often want him to answer in a very specific, undeniable way. And some people do receive their call to missions in such a way. One young man literally dreamed a man told him to be a missionary. He had another dream that showed him where to go.
Another man, who had no interest or inclination toward missions, went to an alumni soccer game at his university. While there, he accidentally sat next to Team Expansion’s president. By the end of the conversation, his whole life was on a new course. Within a few weeks of that encounter, his family was preparing to move overseas.
People often experience this clear kind of call after a short-term mission trip. One couple started talking on the flight home after spending a few weeks in Taiwan. By the time the plane landed back in the States, they had decided to serve as full-time missionaries. They had just bought a house. They were both getting master’s degrees. But when they landed, they knew that none of that mattered. They weren’t sure where they’d end up, but they knew they had to go.
Long Obedience
For most missionaries, the call came gradually. As doors closed and opened around them, they simply walked through the ones God opened, and this obedience led them to missions.
One missionary started out as a pilot. Then he served in youth ministry. Then he trained and worked as an emergency room nurse. Now his family serves in Cambodia. About the process, he said, “We always felt God’s leading for the next step. Never more than that, just the next step.”
A family staying with some missionaries began reevaluating their future when those missionaries talked about their call. The family saw there were people who didn’t know Jesus. They were willing, and with God’s help, they knew they were able. Those three things convinced them to become missionaries.
Many people who were progressing through their walk with Christ found their willingness to follow him anywhere gradually led them to a place where missions was just the next step. It was still a risk, and it was still a leap of faith, but it’s what they needed to do. At some point, obedience was easier than resistance.
Biblical Examples
Conviction
Missions is difficult. Many missions organizations and experts insist that without a clear call from God, missionaries will struggle to stay on the field. If, however, in the midst of the hard times, a missionary is convicted to say, “God brought me here for his purpose,” he or she is more likely to sustain through the difficult seasons.
Such certainty clearly is important, but even that is not a guarantee of success on the field. Not every missionary sees the fruit of his or her efforts. God does not ask people to walk into certain victory.
Rather, answering the call to cross-cultural ministry often means agreeing to upheaval, disapproval, humiliation, brokenness, exhaustion, and even oppression. There’s a very real possibility the missionary will experience failure like never before.
But answering God’s call also means seeing God move. He provides. He changes—especially the missionary. He reveals his heart for the broken and lost. He expands the vision and capacity for his grace and power.
Certainly God will not ask every Christian to move overseas and serve the unreached people of the world. But he has a plan for every believer, and many have not yet sought what that plan might be. God might not reveal the whole plan, but he’ll always provide the next step.
