The Sense of Calling
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment, but looking back at a fuzzy period in my life I think I began to actually sense God calling me to vocational ministry. Somewhere during my early teen years God put it on my heart that serving him as a pastor or as a full-time minister in some capacity was his will for my life. I began to think about it a lot, and this sense of call grew steadily stronger over time. I was young, naïve, and impressionable. I was a sensitive boy, as I look back at those days some 60 years ago now.
The very idea of vocational ministry was deeply implanted in me at an early age, primarily by my story-telling grandmother. Of course, I didn’t understand it in those terms at the time. My grandparents lived in a fine two-story house they built in the 1930’s at the end of the street we lived on. My Uncle Bill built his house next to my grandparents, and we lived in the house my father built next to him. There was a well-trodden path between our house and my grandparent’s house. And in my preschool days, I traveled there daily to enjoy Nanny’s biscuits and stories.
I remember vividly sitting close to her on her settee, enthralled in the many tales, sagas, and anecdotes of her childhood and youth growing up in the small town of Kernersville, North Carolina. But the story of how she became the wife of a Baptist preacher is the tale that topped them all. My grandfather was a recent graduate of Wake Forest College. He was single and had been called as Pastor of First Baptist Church of Kernersville, NC. Nanny’s father was a Deacon in the church. The young pastor and the Deacon’s daughter were married after a few years of courtship.
Papa yearned for a seminary education, and it wasn’t long before the young couple boarded a train bound for Fort Worth, Texas, the gateway to the West. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary had recently been established as the second Southern Baptist Seminary under the leadership of Dr. B. H. Carroll. It was Nanny’s vivid account of the three or four-day train excursion that captured my imagination as she described the passing scenes she observed from the window of the train and the thrill of seeing things she’d never seen before and the changing landscapes, the nameless small towns they passed through, crossing the muddy Mississippi, and finally entering a new world of the wide-open spaces of West Texas. I could see it all through the eyes of her memorable journey.
Nanny talked with such passion, joy, and gratitude of those seminary days. I still remember the reverence in her voice as she spoke about meeting Dr. Carroll, and other seminary professors, and the lasting impact of those formative days in Fort Worth. My grandmother’s stories were meant to entertain and occupy her little grandson’s body and mind. But it accomplished much more than that. It implanted something in his heart and mind that would in time materialize as a sense of calling.
For everyone called by God to vocational ministry, there are those individuals whom the Lord uses in his own mysterious ways to sow the spiritual seeds of salvation and service according to his eternal plans and purposes. My grandmother was one of the many influencers in my life, but she was certainly an important one. Borrowing a term from contemporary fashion and art, she was a tastemaker. She gave me a taste of something so good and so true, I can still taste it. She was a catalyst. Her many stories fired up my boyish imagination and sense of possibilities. If I could sum it up in one word, she was an example to me of what faithfulness to one’s calling looks like.
Without debate, the Apostle Paul was a strong influence in Timothy’s life and vocational calling. Timothy became one of Paul’s principal proteges in ministry. But Paul gave great credit to Timothy’s grandmother and his mother in the formation of his faith. Writing to him in II Timothy 1, he told him: I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands (II Timothy 1:5-6). That last part is a reference to Timothy’s ordination and, ever the catalyst, Paul exhorted Timothy to get fired up again in the exercise of his gift and calling in Christ as a minister of the Gospel.
The sense of God’s calling may come long before the conviction and clarity of his calling. It’s like a seed planted in the soil. It takes a while before the plant appears. But that doesn’t mean that something significant isn’t happening out of sight. God is bringing influences and influencers to bear upon the soul, and a sense of calling is growing day-by-day. Finally, what has been developing beneath the surface, undeniably appears.