Hearing the Call

Do We Really Have a Calling?

Unless you came to church today just doing your religious duty for the week, I think most of you come because you want God to speak to you. You want God to move you from the inside out. That's my prayer today — that God would move you. We don't just need a nice guest message. We want God to move us.

Our text is Jeremiah chapter 1, and I've entitled this message Hearing the Call.

Think about that phrase for a second. "Hearing the call" implies that we actually have a call in our life. Americans are mixed on this idea. Some believe we do have a call — we just can't find it. Others think there's no call at all; that's just a myth, and you do whatever you want.

But shouldn't we, as Christians, absolutely know that we have a calling from God?

"God has chosen us before the foundation of the world." (Ephesians 1:4)

Before he said, "Let there be light," he knew we would exist one day. And Jesus confirmed our calling. After he rose from the dead, he took his followers up to Mount Arbel, the highest point in Galilee. From there the Sea of Galilee looks like a little puddle, and you can see forever. There Jesus said, in effect, "Go — everywhere. Not just to your next-door neighbor, but to your work, wherever you are — and preach the gospel."

Yet many Christians willingly neglect this call. They have time for everything under the sun except time to preach the gospel. As Francis Chan said:

"Most of us use 'I'm waiting for God to reveal his calling in my life' as a means of avoiding action. Did you hear God call you to watch TV? Did you hear God call you to go on vacation or to exercise? Probably not, but you still did it. Why are we so quick to rationalize our desires yet so slow in serving God?"

It's a good question.

Someone Just Needs to Tell Them God Loves Them

To be called is to be requested. When it comes to sharing the gospel, it's God who is requesting us to be a vessel for him. But why us?

Last month I was teaching in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and rather than fight morning traffic, I booked a hotel in South Philly. I rolled in a little after midnight. There was a woman at the counter named Colleen. You could tell she'd had a hard life. The lobby was empty, so I said, "Colleen, when's the last time someone told you there's a God in heaven who loves you?" She just looked at me. So I kept talking about Jesus.

Twenty minutes later, tears were running down her face. I said, "Colleen, what's wrong?" She said, "No one's ever told me that God loves me."

How is it possible that a woman in her sixties had never had one believer on the planet tell her that God loves her? I wonder how many people in your life right now are broken and hurting and just need someone to tell them that God loves them.

"The sorrows which this world inflicts are the sorrows which nothing this world can heal." — J. Sidlow Baxter

The world knows how to kick you to the curb and beat you down, but it doesn't know how to fix you. It can put a band-aid on you, but it can't heal you.

Here's the pattern: God has chosen those who were formerly lost — that's you and me — to reach those who are currently lost. It's not rocket science. It's what God has always done.

The Gospel Is Only Good News If It Gets There On Time

"The gospel is only good news if it gets there on time." — Carl Henry

Years ago, when we lived in Northern Virginia, some of us went out witnessing in Washington, D.C. Around 1 a.m. we cut through the city and, two blocks from the White House on 14th Street, we found the red-light district lit up like Christmas — prostitutes, pimps, buyers everywhere. We parked and started sharing Christ.

A young woman named Christine came up to me. I shared the gospel with her, and she was kind, but she didn't bite. We went back to that district every Friday night for a year and a half, and over that time I shared the gospel with Christine more than forty times.

Then one night she came to me visibly shaken — rattled inside — asking me to pray for her. But I was thinking, I've shared with you so many times; I want to talk to someone else tonight. So I brushed her off. I said something like, "You know what you need to do," and walked away.

The next Friday, the other girls asked, "Did you hear what happened to Christine?" A man had picked her up, killed her, and stuffed her body into a manhole.

How could I miss that? She was visibly shaken. I had built a relationship with her, but when she needed me, I wasn't there. It crushed me.

Think about it. What if the person at the desk next to you, or on the job site with you, didn't show up tomorrow because they'd been killed in an accident — and you realized you'd never once spoken to them about Jesus? That's what I felt when Christine lost her life.

God has never asked a nuclear physicist, an atheist, or an agnostic to say one word about him. But he has asked you and me. We are his sons and daughters, and he's asked us to say something.

"But you shall speak to them, whether they listen or not, for they are a rebellious people." (Ezekiel 2:7)

God tells us up front: they may not want to listen. But he still says, "Tell them anyway," so that when they stand before him in judgment, they cannot say no one ever told them.

It Matters Which Way We Go

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice asks the Cheshire Cat, "Which way should I go from here?" He says, "That depends on where you want to go." She says, "I don't much care." He replies, "Then it doesn't matter which way you go."

If we as Christians don't care where we're going and don't care about God's calling, then it doesn't matter which way we go. But if we truly are believers, we should go where God has called us. It matters what we say — and what we don't say.

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." (1 Peter 2:9)

The same forgiveness and hope you have received, your lost family, coworkers, and neighbors can receive too — as long as you're willing to open your mouth. We are the vessel God has chosen for this generation.

My wife and I started coming to Harvest 47 years ago, and we invited people every week — sometimes forty people a week. We packed a Ford van full and brought them every single week. Why? Because Greg was so faithful to preach the gospel. It didn't matter if he was teaching on parenting or marriage — he always delivered the goods at the end.

You might think, I'm not the kind of person God uses. Listen, God uses every kind of person. You want the technique? You want the secret sauce? Here it is:

1. Open your mouth.
2. Talk about Jesus.

At what point did Jesus stop being your favorite conversation? If he changed your life, how did he become your least favorite thing to talk about?

Today I picked three random people out of the Bible — a teenager, an old man, and a religious man who was dead on the inside. I wonder which one you most resemble.

1. The young
2. The old
3. The religious

The Young — Jeremiah

"Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.' Then I said, 'Alas, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am a youth.' But the Lord said to me, 'Do not say, "I am a youth," because everywhere I send you, you shall go, and all that I command you, you shall speak.'" (Jeremiah 1:4–7)

God called a teenager to stand in the gap for the lost people of his culture. Why? Maybe because no adult would go.

As a youth pastor for fifteen years I learned this: if you expect nothing out of a teenager, he'll give it to you every time. But if you tell a teenager, "God can use you to a degree that will blow your mind," everything changes.

I remember Bethany Johnson — sixteen years old, blonde, ninety pounds, looked like Miss Purity. I took her to a three-day crusade in Modesto. The first night she was petrified and said nothing. But by Saturday she decided, I'm just going to throw myself in.

After the Saturday crusade we went out witnessing in the party district at 11:30 at night. Of all people, Bethany walked up to a "party girl" covered in goth makeup, tattoos, and piercings — polar opposites. The girl said, "Who are you to come talk to me? I went to a Bible club in high school, but I'm way past that. That's when I got my first tattoo," and she showed a cross on her arm.

Bethany grabbed her hand and said, "When you were my age going to Bible club and you got that first tattoo, did you ever think you'd have this stamp on your hand?" — a stamp from the Sin City bar. The girl melted. They talked for half an hour and exchanged numbers.

The girl promised to come to the Sunday crusade but didn't. Bethany was crushed. But on the long drive home through nowhere, Bethany's phone rang. It was the girl, weeping: "I just need to get right with God." And Bethany led her to Christ over the phone in the van.

That's what God can do with a teenager.

"What Am I Going to Say?"

Jeremiah responded the way most of us do: "What will I say? Who's going to listen to me?" Most people talk themselves out of being used by God. The devil starts to squirm when a Christian talks to a non-Christian — but sometimes the Christian says, "No, go ahead and have a seat, I'll take care of this myself."

What if they ask a question I can't answer? Then say, "You're right, I don't know — but I'll find out and text you." And that gives you a reason to circle right back to their soul.

Someone might say, "I don't believe the Bible." You can answer: "If you can get the first ten words of the Bible, you'll have no problem with the 780,000 that follow." Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Think about the complexity of the human body, a dolphin, a hummingbird, cauliflower, a redwood tree — they all carry complex DNA, and each reproduces after its kind. Do you really think that all just happened on its own? There was a Creator. Get the first verse, and you won't have a problem with the rest.

"Nobody Wants to Listen to Me"

That happens to me all the time. Once in Rochester, New York, no one would listen. We rounded a corner and there were about a hundred people at a bus stop. I said, "Follow my lead," and we just started preaching. I led three men to Christ, and turned around to find that Kim — a sixteen-year-old witnessing machine — had just led three girls to Christ. "Go do some more," I said. That day, at that one bus stop, we led twenty-seven people to Christ in two hours. It's never happened like that again — but it happened once.

Jeremiah's Culture — and Ours

"Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people... Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward." (Jeremiah 7:23–24)

When a culture is so caught up in itself that it does whatever seems right in its own eyes, God says it goes backward, not forward.

So let me ask you, believer: which way are you going right now — backward or forward? And all the people around you — the neighbor you don't talk to, the family member you cut off, the coworkers you ignore — which way do you think they are going? God wants us to be a voice of reason in the midst of the chaos.

Jeremiah became that voice simply by going where God asked and doing what God asked. Was it easy? No. By chapter 20 he's burned out and says he'll speak no more —

"But if I say, 'I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,' there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot." (Jeremiah 20:9)

When is the last time God's word burned in your heart? If it hasn't in a long time, why is that?

God uses those who are willing to be used. Don't think your age, your looks, or your ability has anything to do with it. He can use a high school student to tear up a campus. He can use you in your twenties, thirties, or beyond. Don't ever think he couldn't use you.

The Old — Moses

"Oh, I'm tired. I'm busy. I've got so much going on. I need a nap."

Here's a man who, at eighty years old, gave God nothing but excuses. Yet who would have thought God would take this old man and mention him in the Bible more than any human being who ever lived — second only to God himself?

Moses was supposed to die at birth. His mother hid him in a basket on the Nile, and Pharaoh's own daughter found him and raised him as a prince of Egypt. At forty, discovering he was a Hebrew, he killed an Egyptian who was beating a slave and fled into the desert — the University of the Backside of the Desert. And God said nothing to him for forty years.

Have you ever felt like you've been in the desert a long time? Like nothing works out and everything goes up in flames? Recognize this: the very things you think will break you, crush you, and grind you to powder are often the very things God uses to mold and shape you. Nobody grows serving God while sipping iced tea on a beach in Tahiti. It's through the hardships of life that God raises us up to do something far greater than we could ever do on our own.

At eighty, when Moses felt worthless and useless, God called him from a burning bush that would not burn up. "Take off your sandals, you're standing on holy ground. I'm sending you back to Egypt — tell Pharaoh to let my people go." Moses said, in effect, "How about no." He gave every excuse: I'm the wrong guy, I'm too old, I'm tired. Finally he said, "Lord, just send somebody else."

Have you ever felt like that? God, send somebody else.

I felt it in Washington, D.C., one brutal summer day — 90 degrees, 90 percent humidity, and nobody wanted to hear about Jesus. I was zero for twenty, dehydrated, done, heading to my car for a Big Gulp. Then that still, small voice: Talk to her. A young woman, about twenty-one, sitting on a bench. I kept walking. The voice came again. Finally I gave in: "Okay, Lord, I'll show you no one wants to hear."

I walked up and said, "Can I tell you about Jesus?" She said, "Sure." I was so caught off guard I stumbled over my words like Porky Pig. I butchered the sinner's prayer. But when I looked up, tears were pouring down her face. And I realized: the power is in the message, not in the person who gives it. The power is in the message of the living God who came and died for the sin of all humanity.

Moses turned God down five times and said, "Get somebody else." Then God said:

"Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now then go, and I, even I, will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say." (Exodus 4:11–12)

God is simply looking for someone willing to go. Moses went — reluctantly — but God filled him with power and made him the great deliverer.

The Religious — Saul of Tarsus

"Saul approved of their killing him... And Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house; and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison." (Acts 8:1–3)

This is what real persecution looks like. We say, "I got persecuted — someone made fun of me for carrying my Bible." No. This is persecution.

Saul was a Pharisee — the highest religious sect of the day, the group that handed Jesus over to be crucified. He was highly educated, a Hebrew of Hebrews, blameless under the law. He climbed the religious and political ladder, surpassed all his rivals, and won the applause of his peers by trying to stamp out Christianity.

But did it satisfy him? No. Dead religion can't satisfy any heart. There is a God-shaped void in every person you know, and only God can fill it.

I know what empty religion feels like. When I was sixteen my parents divorced and both took off. I was on my own — drinking, on drugs, stealing from my employer, lying, cheating. Some people invited me to church, and I was hopeful. I wanted family, and mine was broken.

I sat in that packed church in 1977, holding the bulletin, standing and kneeling and sitting at all the wrong times. Finally the priest came out to give the message — and he spoke in Latin. I leaned over and whispered, "What is he saying?" "Latin." "Do you speak Latin?" "No." "Does anyone here speak Latin?" "I don't think so."

I didn't say it out loud, but as an eighteen-year-old I thought: Doesn't he know my life is empty? That there's a giant void in my chest? Why is he speaking a language I can't understand? I left thinking, God can't be real.

Religion couldn't save Saul, and it couldn't save me. But Jesus did. He knocked Saul off his horse with a blinding light: "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" That changed the course of his life. He went from Saul, meaning "man in demand," to Paul, his Roman name meaning "little one." Paul humbled himself before God so that God could lift him up.

Is there anyone here who needs to be humbled by God — who would say, "God, I have not been a voice in my generation. People have been perishing and I've said nothing. I have not been willing to be used to reach those around me"?

Paul did that, and God used him to bring the gospel to Jews and Gentiles and to write half of the New Testament.

What All Three Had in Common

None of these three wanted to go at first — a teenager, an old man, and a religious zealot from three different generations. But they all ended up sharing one thing: they began to burn with the heart of God.

• Jeremiah said, "Oh that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people." (Jeremiah 9:1) He stopped seeing people as scumbags in his way and started seeing them through God's eyes.

• Moses, when God said, "Step aside, I'll destroy them," pleaded: "But now, if you will forgive their sin — and if not, please blot me out of the book you have written." (Exodus 32:32) Take my life for theirs.

• Paul, beaten and stoned by his own people, said, "I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh." (Romans 9:3) My life for theirs.

Let me ask you a question. What is harder for the Creator of a hundred billion galaxies — to open the heart of a hardened sinner who hates God, or to open the mouth of one of his own children to speak to that sinner?

May I suggest to you: it is harder for God to open the mouth of one of his sons and daughters than it is to open the heart of a lost soul.

The Power Is in the Message

Just a month ago, at a restaurant with Barry and Karen McGuire, I looked at our waitress and said, "Can I tell you something? There's a God in heaven who loves you." She said, "No one's ever told me that before." I told her the story of a server who once gave his life to Christ standing at our table, and I said, "You could do that right now." She said, "Yes, I would." And right there she gave her life to Christ.

See, God wants to do something. The power is not in me — it's in the message.

My Greatest Failure

I don't want to end as the hero, because I've had plenty of failures. Forty-six years ago, my wife was in cosmetology school and invited a classmate to church — a flaming homosexual, as I saw it then. In my prejudiced, before-Christ mindset I was disgusted. I pulled my wife into the bedroom and said, "What is this?" She simply said, "I invited him. Jesus loves him."

I drove twenty-five minutes to the Riverside campus without saying a single word to that young man. I was being a jerk. When Greg gave the invitation — "If your heart is sick and you're tired of who you are, come forward" — that young man was the first to jump up and come to the front.

It was like a spear through my heart. How could I be so prejudiced, such a bigot? Was my sin any less than his? I was crushed, and I had to humble myself and repent. The opportunity had been handed to me on a golden platter, and only my wife had seen it.

Closing Appeal

Is there anyone here who needs to repent because you haven't opened your mouth? Because you haven't been the voice of reason in this culture? Would you come and stand and say, "God, I'm sorry for not opening my mouth"?

We are the generation that I believe will see Jesus Christ come back. There needs to be another revival like the Jesus Revolution. You can't live on yesterday's blessing — today is a new day. If the church doesn't catch fire, if Jesus doesn't become our favorite conversation, it won't happen. And if we won't do it, God will raise up others: "You had your chance; I'll use somebody else."

Maybe you need a refilling of the Holy Spirit today. If you want to be filled and used by God, would you stand right where you are and say, "God, here I am. Use me"? If you don't mean it, sit down — God already knows your heart. But if you mean it, stay standing, and pray this with me out loud, like you mean it:

Lord Jesus, forgive me. I want to be your voice. Use me — in this culture, in my generation, with the people I like and the people I don't like. Let people look in my eyes and not see me — let them see you. Fill me, Holy Spirit of God. Refresh me, renew me, inspire me, speak through me. I ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen.