Is God Still Calling?
By Father Martin Ritsi
God's call to serve Him has been given throughout biblical history. We
see
this in His calling of Abraham, Moses, Jonah, and the Prophets. It is
woven
throughout the Old and New Testaments, as God elects people to proclaim
His
message. But most powerfully the calling to follow the Lord and preach
the
Gospel to all creation is seen at the Ascension of Jesus Christ. In His
last appearance to the disciples, just before His ascension into heaven,
Jesus commissions them with these parting words: "Go therefore and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit..." (Matt. 28:19).
What about today, is God still calling? To answer this question we can
first look at the situation of the world, nearly 2,000 years later.
Living
in a country where the majority professes to be Christian can make it
hard
to realize that only 1/3 of all humanity is Christian. Even harder to
imagine, in a world of jet travel, technology and the Internet, is that
of
the 2/3 who are not Christian there are 1.5 billion people who have never
heard the Gospel or met a Christian in their entire lives!
Coming back to Jesus' Commission, and considering that God sent the Son
into the world so that every living being might be saved (John 3:16-17),
our question should not be "Is God calling us today;" but rather, "Is it
possible that God is not calling?"
A young man, just out of college and searching for meaning and direction
in
life stumbles through the Bible. He reads of the Lord's request to sell
all
and follow Him (Luke 18:22) and wonders, could this apply to him as well?
In searching for a path in life he yearns to find a direction that is
intimately connected to his purpose on earth, and asks over and over
again:
"Is the Lord calling me to be a missionary?" A bishop lovingly answers
him
and says, "My child, God's Will is deep within your heart. Follow this
and
the Lord will lead you."
It would be a tragedy to be called by God for a mission in this world,
and
not to recognize it; or even worse, to be called by God and not to
respond.
Yet, looking at the mission task that still lies ahead and surveying the
meager number of missionaries commissioned by the Church for this work,
one
would have to conclude that God is calling and many are missing that
calling, or are unwilling to respond.
A couple approaches a missionary, after her presentation in a church, and
says: "Oh, when we were younger we always wanted to be missionaries." One
mission agency estimates that only 5% percent of those who say they have
received a 'call to missions' actually make it to the mission field. The
other 95% get sidetracked in some way.
Is it possible that God is calling and we are not responding? Again,
let's
look at the statistics. There are approximately 415,000 long-term
missionaries in the entire world today. This represents about .02% of all
Christians. With 2/3 of humanity still not believing, surely God must be
calling more than two out of every 10,000 Christians to carry the Gospel
to
those who have not heard.
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