“Laura, how were you called into missions?” I wasn’t. Next question.

I grow weary of that question. I grow weary of people being gravely concerned that I’ve never experienced a “divine call.” 

(And by the way, what is so special about missionaries or Christian school teachers or pastors that we say God has a “divine call” on their lives, as if choosing another occupation means you’re less than?)

I’m leaving in a few months to be a career missionary with Nate and baby Erin because…

 duh duh duh duhhhhhh…

It just makes sense. And that’s really as deep as it gets.

I mean, if Christ gave the command to the apostles to go to the ends of the earth and all of those men have died out before making it to the uttermost, and as a result there are entire people groups left who still haven’t heard the message of Christ’s resurrection, shouldn’t I pick up the torch and go tell them? Do I really need a special call? Robert Speer says it best: 

“Christians will pursue a profession here in the United States having demanded far less positive assurance that this is God’s will than it is for them to go out into the mission field. But by what right do they make such distinctions? If men are going to draw lines of division between different kinds of service, what preposterous reasoning leads them to think that it requires less divine sanction for a man to spend his life easily among Christians than it requires for him to go out as a missionary to the heathen? If men are to have special calls for anything, they ought to have special calls to go about their own business, to have a nice time all their lives, to choose the soft places, to make money, and to gratify their own ambitions.

There is a general obligation resting upon Christians to see that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached to the world. You and I need no special call to apply that general call of God to our lives. 

This whole business of asking for special calls to missionary work does violence to the Bible. It does violence to the ordinary canons of common sense and honest judgment. There is the command, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.’ We say, ‘That means other people.’ There is the promise, ‘Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.’ We say, ‘That means me.’ We must have a special divine indication that we fall under the command; we do not ask any special divine indication that we fall under the blessing.

Let us lay aside those shuffling evasions by which the Devil is attempting to persuade us to escape from our duty, and let us get up like men and look at it and do it.” 

A-freakin-men.