As part of training for this world missions trip, we were asked to share a brief story of when God called us to do something radical. Here is my story…
Calling: A strong inner urge or prompting; A claim on a person’s time or life; A summons or invitation; To say in a loud voice
Radical: Departing markedly from the usual or customary; extreme
Well, these definitions pretty much sum it up. This is exactly what happened when I received my “calling from God”. Let me tell you the story.
This past Christmas break I attended a conference called Urbana. It is a week long missions conference, and this year it was held in St. Louis, Missouri. I am positive it is one of the most intense times you will ever encounter in your life. Every day there were speakers, sessions, worship times, and even the meals were turned into experiences. You were literally DOING THINGS from 6 am until 12-1 am. It was incredible, yet exhausting. By the fourth day (of 5), I was so tired, I had nothing left in me. We were given the afternoon to pray, relax, check out the missions booths, but mainly to pray. I wanted to get in on this, but being so tired I wasn’t sure how I would manage.
I tried going to a prayer room, but there were so many people I ended up finding a small space of wall to sit against in the hallway. It was here that I tried to pray, but mostly was just sitting quietly. I now realize that I was doing what Seth Barnes calls listening prayer. It is in my weakest moment that I could hear God the clearest. This is what He said. “Give me one year of your life”.
Ummm what?
“Give me one year of your life”. It was like an actual voice was talking to me. It fit all of the descriptions of calling given above. It was a loud voice, but it was also in my head, so it was an inner urge. It was an invitation to let God claim a year of my life. Now I can hear you saying “Ummm WHAT?”. This is pretty “extreme” and “unusual” and “radical”.
So here I sit, exhausted, in the Edward Jones Dome, one little person out of over 22,000, and it all becomes that muddy shade of clear. God wants me to give Him a whole year of my life. But this is all the information I get. The only direction I receive is to “give me one year”. Not HOW or WHEN or WHY, just DO IT. So I’m thinking, “well ok God, but I need to know a little more than that”. And all that keeps repeating is “give me one year of your life”. By this time I am a little intrigued, and more than a little frustrated. I had already looked into a missions type opportunity that was a little over a year long, so I thought maybe this is confirmation to go ahead with the application with that group.
I get home from Urbana, and send in my application form. As I am waiting for a response, I continue to look into opportunities, all the while keeping in mind my radical call to give God one year of my life. This is where The World Race comes in.
This is where the story of my radical call leaves off, and the story of why I am going on The World Race picks up, so tune in next week to hear all about it.
For more radical stories of how God has called someone check out Meredith’s blog.
The definitions are from dictionary.com.
