RHEMA Bible Training Center STUDY: THE MINISTRY GIFTS

Lesson IV FAITHFULNESS TO THE CALL

Introduction: Some people in the ministry were either never called, or they are hope­lessly unfaithful. Why? Because God didn't plan any spiritual failures. Whether we are individual members of Christ, or we are called to be a ministry gift, He did not give some to be failures and some to succeed. No, He planned that all would succeed. There­fore, some ministers are either hopelessly unfaithful, or they were never called. You see, you have to apply yourself to the calling of God upon your life. Ministries don't just hap­pen any more than marriages just happen. You have to work at a marriage, just as you do the ministry.

A.    Study. Preparation time is never lost time.

2 TIMOTHY 2:15

15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to

be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

B.    Dedicate. Along with the call goes a dedication.

C.   Consecrate. Along with the call goes a consecration.

D.   Submit to the will of God. Along with the call goes a submission to the will of God.

Comments: When you're first beginning in the ministry, you don't start out on top. Even in climbing a ladder, no one starts out on the top rung. They start on the bottom rung and climb up. You have to do that in ministry. And sometimes the first years of ministry are a great sacrifice. But if you know the call is there, you will stay in there no matter what it may cost you.

You have to make this kind of a consecration to God: Go under or over, sink or swim, live or die, I'm staying with it because God called me.

Because you are going out by faith, you know it's not going to wind up that way — but it will look that way sometimes. It will look as if you are going to do all of them — go under, sink, and die.

But if you will stay faithful at those times when it looks as if you're going under, when it looks as if you're sinking, when it looks as if you're dying — YOU WILL GO OVER BECAUSE YOU ARE CALLED OF GOD!!!

Example: Many years ago a man and his wife and two small children went on the foreign mission field. They were Full Gospel missionaries before there were any organized Full Gospel churches. He told me that the first six months it looked as though he and his wife and both children were going to starve to death. "It would have been easy to come home," he said. "But we stayed put because we knew God had called us. And we knew what God's Word said. I made this dedication to God. 'We will stay with it even if all four of us die.'"

They didn't die. Before the year was out they were flourishing financially.

But if they had not been faithful, it would not have happened. Had they griped and complained and said, "I don't know why this happened to us. If God

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called us, why doesn't He provide for us?" God would not have been able to do what He wanted to do for them, and they would have been failures.

E.    Be a person of integrity.

1.    Psalm 15:4 gives one of the characteristics of a spiritual pilgrim as, ". . . He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not."

2.    People who have the call of God on their lives and who are also people of integrity — honest and sincere — will stay hooked up with God.

F.     Develop. Mature. Grow.

1.    Ministries are developed. If you are called to the ministry, take time to develop the ministerial gift.

2.    It takes time for people to become equipped to do what God has for them to do. They must not only be equipped spiritually; they must mature naturally and spiritually.

3.    Usually people start out in a different area of ministry from what God called them to.

a.    Saul (Paul) is named as one of the five prophets and/or teachers in Acts 13. Later the New Testament calls him an apostle. But he didn't start out with an apostle's ministry. He started out as a preacher (Gal. 1:11,15,16,23).

b.    Philip started out in the ministry of helps (Acts 6:1-6). He was faithful in that office. Later he was moved to the office of the evangelist (Acts 8:5-7; 21:8).

c.    If God called you to pastor, you will not begin pastoring a church of 2,000. You would not know how to handle the job. You may start with a small flock, or as an assistant, or associate pastor, youth pastor, and so forth.

d.    God may have called you to be an evangelist. You may eventually preach to 5,000. But you won't start out preaching to 5,000. You may start out by preaching to five.

e.    Do not despise the day of small things (Zech. 4:10).

4.    Take time to wait and see what God wants you to do. Let God make you the minister He wants you to be.

a.    Don't say, "I choose this office." You cannot choose. God alone sets people in ministry gift offices.

b.    Don't try to be like someone else. Just be yourself. Take the truth of God's Word that is revealed to you and let God use your personality to inject it. Then it becomes your message.

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c.    Don't just say, "I'm a teacher." Stop and wait and find out whether that is what you are or not.

d.    Just because you had one revelation or have given a few words of prophecy, don't say, "I'm a prophet."

From all probability you are not.

Even if your call were as a prophet, you couldn't enter that office right away. You wouldn't be capable.

God will not violate His own rules. His Word says not to put a novice in the office of deacon (1 Tim. 3:6). God will not put an immature Christian or an immature preacher into the office of prophet.

e.    Get some spiritual growth and development under your belt before you try to ascertain and advertise what office you are in.

f.    If God called you and set you in an office, you won't have to advertise it, anyway. People will find out eventually. If they do not, it is not your min­istry.

g.    If the ministry is there in embryo stage, it will develop as you are faithful.

h.   You must first determine whether or not the call of God is there. Then be faithful to work for God wherever you are. (To preach and to teach the Word is always right.) Eventually — when you reach some maturity, both mentally and spiritually — God will let you know what your calling is.

5.    Take time to wait on God. Take time to fast and pray. Take time to find His perfect will for your life and ministry.

a.    I shall never forget the day I was kneeling at the altar in my church when I said to the Lord, "Lord, I've been waiting on You for 10 years."

Just as plain as some man talking to me, He said, "No, you haven't. I've been waiting on you for 10 years. I've been waiting on you to make up your 1 mind to obey me. I've been waiting on you to make up your mind to do j what I want you to do."

b.    In the first vision when Jesus appeared to me, He said, "When you left your last church you entered into the first phase of your ministry."

I was shocked. I'd been in the ministry 15 years. I said, "Lord, I spent 15 years in the ministry, and You blessed me."

He said, "Certainly. I blessed you all I could. I blessed the Word you preached because I honor My Word. That doesn't mean I was honoring you."

Then He said this, "Many ministers live and die and never get into the first

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phase of the ministry I have for them. That's the reason many of them die prematurely."

(You see, if you are not in the perfect will of God, you are in a place where Satan can attack you. If you are not in the perfect will of God, it is difficult to claim the highest that belongs to you.)

"Many ministers live and die and never get into the first phase of the min­istry I have for them." I thought about it through the years. I could have done the same thing.

"Oh, yes," somebody said, "the Lord singled you out, though."

No, He never did a thing until I started seeking Him. He never moved. He never told me a thing.

c.    Stay open to God.

If you settle down into another call, or another area of ministry and don't keep the communication lines open between you and Heaven, God will let you go on and suffer the consequences of being out of the perfect will of God.

d.   When you're only in the permissive will of God, something won't seem right to you. You can tell the difference. It's sort of like washing your feet with your socks on.

G.    Do not intrude into the wrong office.

1.    I think the thing that hinders people in the ministry more than anything else is trying to stand in the wrong office. The tragedy is that people live and die there and never know it.

2.    It can cost you your ministry.

a.    Charles Finney was the greatest soulwinner and evangelist since the New Testament days. When he was about 80, he wrote, "I know many things, deeper things of God, than I am able to teach. If I do teach these things, I lose the ability to win souls."

Why, if he knew these things, couldn't he teach them? (Of course he could share them with others individually, but he didn't teach them to the Church at large.) Because that was not his calling. Let the teachers do that. His calling was the evangelistic office. His calling was to win souls. If he got over into the wrong office, he ceased to be a blessing.

b.    Part of my calling is to be a teacher. I get more people saved by teaching than I ever did by preaching evangelistic sermons because that is what God told me to do.

3.    Intruding into the wrong office can cost you your life.

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