The Mission Society - How to Know You are Called

Blessed Unrest: An interview with Dr. David Seamands

How can a sudden disquieting of heart be interpreted? If this is God calling, how can a person know? Is there any way to test or confirm a call? In the following, Dr. David Seamands examines the exciting business of hearing God’s call.

"I wanted to be a doctor. But after my conversion (in my early teen years) there began to be a deepening inner conviction - the voice of the Holy Spirit - that I was called to be a preacher, an evangelist, and in India! Oh, and I did not like the idea of India, so I battled with God for several months. But from the moment I yielded, there was a peace and a certainty in my life," says Dr. David Seamands, speaking about his call.

Why do we Christians talk about callings? Is there a biblical basis for God's calling people to a particular task?
First of all, God has a general call for all people and that is to salvation; God calls all people to Himself. Then all Christians have a call--to be a witness. But beyond that, some people are called by God into a particular service. Look, for example, at the way Paul begins nearly all the epistles. Romans 1:1 says, "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God. . . ." I Corinthians 1 reads, "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. . . ." In Galatians 1:1: "Paul an apostle--sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities - but through Jesus Christ and God the Father. . . ." In Colossians Paul begins, "Paul, an apostle by the will of God. . . ." Paul was set apart; he had a particular call on his life.

Why are people called of God?
God's method of doing things in this world is to bless the many through the few. We can see this with the story of Abraham. God called Abraham and said to him, "Your spiritual descendants are going to be like the stars in the heavens." God set Abraham apart and blessed him in order that He could bless many other people through Abraham. God reaches through one - or a few - to everyone. Of course, the ultimate example of this is God's working through one, His only Begotten Son, Jesus, to bless the whole world.

What have been God's biblical methods for calling people?
There are examples in the Bible of God's speaking directly to a person or communicating in some dramatic way, like Moses' burning bush experience or Paul's Damascus Road experience. But there is also biblical precedence for an individual's being called by their realizing a need and responding to it. I think of Nehemiah, the cup bearer of the king, who heard the terrible stories of what was happening in Jerusalem, how the walls were all broken and the gates were burned. Realizing the need is what impelled Nehemiah to go to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls. The need became his call. Then you have illustrations of God's calling individuals to a particular task before they were born, like Jeremiah.

Do you believe God still uses some of those methods for calling people?
Yes. In fact my father's missionary call was like the Apostle Paul's. My parents were missionaries to India for 40 years, and my father was called to be a missionary in India before he was even converted. He was an engineering student at the University of Cincinnati, and he was visiting a holiness camp-meeting - Camp Sychar. It was missionary day, and the missionary speaking was a bishop from China. He told about China's need for roads and bridges, how engineering there was so backward. And my father, who was sitting in the last row, thought to himself, "I know what I will do; I will go to China, and I'll make a million dollars building roads over there." And then, my father says, in an instant, up in the air, over the platform, there appeared in silvery letters I-N-D-I-A. My father was so angry he got up and left the service. But that vision never left him. He became a civil engineer, was converted and went to India and became the great builder in the Methodist Church in South India. He led thousands to Christ, and he built hospitals and schools and more than 100 churches.

Lesslie Newbigin's call was more like Nehemiah's. Newbigin, a contemporary of my father's, was a young student in Britain when someone told him about the need for a young person to go to India just for a year for a particular task. Newbigin thought travel to India would be a good experience for a year, so he went. And he ended up spending his whole life there. He became one of the great British missionaries to India. In fact he became one of only a handful of foreigners who was elected bishop of the Church of South India. His call was completely different. He went and saw the need, and that became his call.

How can a person discern God's call?
I remember some Christian saint using the illustration that the secret to sailing a ship into a harbor at night is to line up certain lights. The captain doesn't just say, "There's the harbor and I'm going in." The captain lines up the lights. What are those lights for us as we're seeking guidance? The Word of God, the open and closed doors (our circumstances), the inner voice of God, our particular gifts and talents, and the corporate wisdom of the Body of Christ. I think that is very important. Remember Paul's reminding Timothy that "this gift was given to you by the laying on of hands." The church obviously had a part in the selection of Timothy.

When what we feel we are being asked to do is something we don't want to do, is that a way we can be certain it's God's calling?
I think we must be very careful about this. I've counseled many people who, unfortunately, ended up on the mission field out of a sense of guilt and with the idea that in order to please God, they had to do something they didn't want to do. To think that God calls us to make us miserable would be a wrong concept of God; we would be saying that God is only happy when He's making us unhappy.

If an individual doesn't respond to God's call, (or if doors start closing), has he or she "blown it"?
No, that's a very false notion. The idea that God has only one thing in mind that you can do - that if you miss that you've missed everything - is one of the most damnable ways of thinking. God is far more ingenious, creative, and original than that. He's got a million ideas, and He and you together can work them out. God will ultimately accomplish His work, maybe even more creatively.

My life is an example of that. I was called to be a missionary to India when I was about 15 years old. Helen, who would become my wife, also had a call to missionary service. And so once we were married, we went to India, and served there for 16 years. But a medical situation in our family made it necessary for us to end our career there and come to the States.

When I said good-bye to Helen and my son in the Bombay airport (I would be coming to the States in a several months), we hugged and wept, and Helen said to me, "I don't think you can ever be happy doing anything except being a missionary in India; that is your calling." To which I very piously and seriously answered, "Yes, honey, I think you're right. I will never be happy doing anything else but being a missionary." But if the Lord laughs, I'm sure it was one of those times when He was laughing His head off.

So can an individual have more than one calling?
If someone would have told me 50 years ago that I was going to end up in counseling, I would have said, "You're crazy. That's impossible for me. I have no talent for that." God called me to be a preacher/evangelist and a missionary to India. But in India he prepared me for another calling in pastoral counseling. You see, for the first 10 years of our time in India, we were in village evangelism - preaching, baptizing new believers, and planting congregations. But for the last six years of our time in India, we were sent to the great city of Bangalore, which is today a center for the computer industry.

This is where God pushed me into pastoral counseling - absolutely pushed me with a forklift and a Caterpillar tractor. The people there began to come to me with marital problems, emotional problems, mental problems. I was unable to help these people. It hit me like a ton of bricks that my more or less oversimplified Gospel, which communicated very well in the villages, just didn't work here. So in desperation I ordered scores of books from the States, and I began to study the writings of Christian counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists. That study prepared me for the way God would use me next - in pastoral counseling.

So you think if we are seeking to be obedient to God's direction, He will use all of who we are - our gifts and talents and experiences?
He will use everything you are and everything that has ever happened to you. Dr. Brand is the famous Welsh doctor who was a missionary to India. He became the world specialist for re-constructive surgery on lepers and a noted expert on the human hand. But before he went to medical school, he worked as a carpenter for five years. In his book, Pain: the Gift No One Wants, he tells that for many years he thought he had wasted five years being a carpenter. But he would come to realize it was his early experience as a carpenter that was the key to his being able to invent the prosthesis for restoring the lepers' hands and feet.

So you want to say to every Christian that if you are obedient to what you understand to be God's leading, He will use every bit of who you are for His glory?
Absolutely. Including the bad experiences. I call that 50/20 vision. That comes from Genesis 50:20. After Joseph had been thrown in the well by his brothers, sold into slavery, unjustly accused by Potiphar's wife, languished in a dungeon, had spent 13 years of trial after trial, he became prime minister of all of Egypt. In this verse he says to his brothers, "Even though you intended to do harm to me, God has turned it for good, for the saving of many lives." That's 50/20 vision. That is the best vision - seeing that God is able to take everything and use it as grist in His mill, to make us into what He wants us to be for His glory.

The Rev. Dr. David Seamands was instrumental in the beginnings of the Evangelical Missions Council, which would later give way to The Mission Society, and is one of its founding board members. This interview, conducted and first published by The Mission Society in 1996, has become a valued resource, distributed often to those inquiring about missionary service.