A Psalm for the Journey
November 07, 2024
I find sharing the story of my “call,” somewhat overwhelming in a couple of ways. First, it is overwhelming when we think that the call Christ places upon our lives harkens all the way back to the days when Jesus called out to Andrew and Simon saying, “Come follow me, and I will send you out to fish for people” (Mark 1:17, NIV) Second, call stories are many layered and multifaceted. I can easily attest that my call story is a story of God’s gracious pursuing after me. At times, that pursuit I experienced seemed as if God were invading my life.
I cannot name a specific time when I first experienced the gracious pursuing of God. However, it came as family members and others shared the good news of God’s love for me in Jesus Christ. The first “call,” if you will, was to accept Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord, which I did around the age of ten. This did not bring an end to God’s pursuit of my life. In my early teens, I begin to sense that God was calling me from my plans for my life, to His plans for my life. I would struggle and wrestle with God’s plans for the next seven years or so. Many of those years, I attempted to evade God’s call. Yet, God was undeterred. He kept pursuing and invading.
During my sophomore year of college at the University of Arkansas, I was invited by my friend James to be a part of small Bible study group of guys in our fraternity house. In all honesty, I did not attend the Bible study to grow closer to Christ or learn more about the Bible. I joined the Bible study because I liked the character of the guys in the group. I wanted to know what made their character so appealing. The answer: a growing relationship with Christ that they lived out with the support of one another.
We met each Sunday evening during the school year. When my junior year started, we started meeting as soon as the fall semester began. By the spring semester of my junior, I could no longer evade the Holy Spirit’s pursuit. I met with my friend James and told him that I could no longer escape God’s call. All I could do was surrender to whatever call God was placing on my life. I went from “resisting” God’s call to “discerning” God’s call.
One Sunday night following our weekly small group Bible study, someone accidentally left behind their Bible. I picked it up to see who’s it was. As I was thumbing through the Bible for some sort of clue about ownership, I came upon Matthew 28:18-20:
Then Jesus came to [the disciples] and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Few words have left such a profound impact upon my life. As I read these words, the Holy Spirit impressed upon me that this was the call of God upon my life. I was to “make disciples.” To be a disciple of Jesus is to be a “learner” of Jesus. A leaner in the Bible context entails apprenticeship. In other words, a disciple of Jesus is His apprentice. As an apprentice, a disciple not only learns what Jesus taught, a disciple does the things Jesus did. Making disciples does not happen in a classroom. Making disciples happens in the entire arena of life!
As I begin to seek God’s as to what kind of context I was to “make disciples,” I became more and more attracted to the Wesleyan emphasis on God’s holy love and grace, and the Wesleyan order of salvation. Simply put, the Wesleyan order of salvation can be summed up as follows:
- All need to be saved.
- All can be saved.
- All can know that they are saved.
- All can be saved to the uttermost.
Following graduation from the University of Arkansas, Allison and I were married, and we began working as interns for the Wesley Foundation under the leadership of the then director, Rev. Gregg Taylor. The next year, I began seminary at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. After seminary, Allison and I moved with our one-year-old son, Joshua, to Bay, Arkansas where I served as pastor until 2002. In June of 2002, we moved to Fayetteville with our then four-year-old son, Joshua, and our almost two-year-old daughter, Brooke.
While, I had been serving in the United Methodist Church since 1999, the ultimate call has always been to be faithful to Jesus Christ. Christ’s call supersedes all others. Christ’s call upon my life to follow Him to Christ Church and serve as the Pastor of Adult Ministries is in a new context, but with the same purpose: I am called to be a partner with Christ and partner with each of you as together we make disciples of Jesus Christ.
