Test your call

While we do not believe that it honors God to ask for signs or constantly to “put out a fleece” to test God, there are, nevertheless, certain principles by which we may make our calling sure. These tests are well summarized by one writer:

1. Does it agree with God’s general plan as set forth in His Word?

2. Can your circumstances be made to agree with what seems to be His leading?

3. Does the Holy Spirit bear continual witness that this is the will of God?

4. Are you still called when there is no challenge of adventure and no glamour of heroism? If called to an insignificant field, would you be willing to go? If you were the only one to stand, would you stand?

5. Are you willing to pay any price?

6. Are you merely “impressed” that you should go to a certain field, or is it a deep “conviction”?

These principles may be and should be freely used in testing the call of God for one’s life. Since the tests of a missionary life are severe, we must honestly and seriously test our missionary calling.

Let us do diligence to prepare our hearts for the call of God and make sure that when the call reaches us, it will find a ready and joyous response.

Let us also make sure that we permit the call of God to mature in our lives, but not to grow stale and become ineffective. There is danger in premature action and there is danger in postpostponement.

George W. Peters, A Biblical Theology of Missions (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1972), 285–286.