I have been chewing on these thoughts since
mid-August, coming home from another country which claimed my heart,
after experiencing the hardest most beautiful summer I have ever
endured.
I feel hesitant to call this blog an explanation; but maybe it is.
And I am okay with that. I desire to convey and condense my thousands of
thoughts on this subject in one blog to answer the questions it seems
I’ve been given (and even been asking myself) for months now. This is my
confusion, my back and forth, my journal entries, my crying out to God
for answers, and these are the answers it seems He has given me.
First, let’s define a few things.
Called
If I am being totally honest here, I have grown to really dislike
this word, and maybe this is because of its usage and possibly
misinterpretation in Christian circles.
The day I became a Christian
is the day I became a disciple, a missionary, a teacher of the Word, a
devout follower of Jesus to the ends of the earth. So imagine my
confusion being a part of many different ministries and hearing that
someone has recently been “called to the ministry”, “called to be a
missionary”, etc.
Wait.
That’s a separate calling from becoming a follower of Christ?
We find in Matthew 4, Mark 1, Luke 5, and John 1 the calling of Jesus’s first disciples. He calls them and it says immediately…immediately they
follow Him. It isn’t that somewhere along the way of following this
Messiah they finally come to the realization that they were called to do
what they were already doing. It started in the moment they
got up and left what they were doing, their families and loved ones,
their own hopes and dreams. Of course, they messed up. A lot. The
disciples are known for getting a bad reputation in obeying and
understanding Jesus while He was in their very presence, but they still followed. All
bets off, all decisions made in simply standing up and following Him
the first time He called. The ministry is not reserved for only special
Christians.
I was called to the ministry the day my eyes were opened and I
realized my need for a Savior. I was called to share and live and die
for this faith the moment I found the Truth worth sharing and living and
dying for.
And so were you.
In a flood of nostalgia, I am back in the place where God broke my
heart for the voiceless, unclaimed, hopeless, destitute, orphans of the
flesh and of the Spirit. I’m back on the dusty prayer room floor
scribbling out a journal entry I am still going back to to this day.
It’s where I wrote to my God that I would follow Him anywhere and
everywhere, no matter the cost, no matter the sacrifice.
To get to this
place, God didn’t have to come down riding on the clouds and in a
thundering voice command me to be obedient. Three years ago, I realized
the need to experience and share with another people, so I went. And
when I saw it face-to-face, when I stood in a crowd of hundreds who had never heard,
when I found friendship in the most unlikely of places and the hopeless
became dear to me, I knew I could never be the same. My perception of a
calling could never be the same.
I could never just come back and live the American dream, hoping to
finish college, get married, have kids, live comfortably and attend
church two to three times a week, waiting to see if this God would awake
me in a dead sleep and in a booming voice tell me that He wanted me to
be a missionary in another country.
And I’m convinced this rarely, if ever, happens.
Going
Let’s just define this as “doing”—putting effort forth, trying, making plans and waiting for God to say no.
Wait. What?
So
many believers are so quick to say they are “willing” to go, but they
are only making plans to stay. This doesn’t really add up. What if we
were planning to go, but only willing to stay? Meaning
we make every effort to go, to take this News to those who have never
even had a chance to hear, knowing fully that God is sovereign, and that
if He in fact wanted us to stay, He would stop us.
Now we get to the sticky part. Does God need us? To which, I strongly
say absolutely not. He’s God. He holds all the power. I have not a
single doubt that Yahweh could take the Gospel to every nation without
us and fulfill the beautiful picture of Revelation 7:9 where every
tribe, nation, and tongue is before His throne. But that might be the
utter beauty of this life and my purpose.
I get to open up my mouth as He opens His lips to whisper His
redemptive story over His beloved Child for the very. first. time. I’m not sure why anyone would want to miss out on that.
It might mean not getting married, or not getting married to the
person you always thought. Or not getting the job you have dreamed about
since you were 6. Or seeming like the “rebel child” of the family. Or
having to explain yourself over and over to your family and church, the
people who should understand. But I know one thing for certain: It is
worth it because He is worthy.
In Acts 1:8, He commanded all of His children to
take the Gospel to every place. I see thousands upon thousands of
Christians here and none in so many places. So I am going to try. I plan
on being strategic and intentional with this life I have been
undeservedly given. I am planning to get to a nation(s) that
has never heard of the hope I possess. I am planning to apply to
seminary, to get a masters degree, so that I can apply through the IMB,
to do everything in my power to obey, knowing fully that if that is not
His plan, He will surely disrupt my plans and stop me. And that’s where
I’m only willing to stay.
I do not have some special call that God has given to His chosen few. There are already too few going as it is.
Okay so I know that not every single believer is supposed to go
and live in another country. But I do know more people should be going
than who are, simply because of the statistics of thousands of people
groups who are not only unreached, but unengaged.
Nobody is even trying to take the Gospel to them.
So, to answer the questions of my family and friends and anyone who
has been confused about my plans: I have no idea what I am doing or what
my future holds.
I’m just going to follow Jesus with every day. That
might mean spending my whole life in another country and dying there.
It might mean never stepping foot on foreign soil again if that is His
plan. Or it might mean years in the U.S., years in a dangerous country,
back to the U.S. for months, following weeks with an unengaged people,
to Mexico, to the Philippines, to Thailand, to China, to Iraq, to North
Korea, to Antarctica, back to the U.S.
I’m just going to try.
Because just like you, I have been called.
-Ashley
Read more from Ashley's blog at http://ashleynicoleyates.tumblr.com/post/101625595101/i-dont-know-if-im-called-to-missions-but-im-going
