Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Brooks Buser - How can I know if I've been 'called' to global missions?

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the BibleIn this episode Brooks Buser, President of Radiance International and former missionary in Papua New Guinea, answers the question: “How Can I Know if I've Been 'called' to Global Missions??"Watch on YouTubeFollow on InstagramFollow on TwitterFor More Information

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. If you haven't already, would you please subscribe and rate the show on your podcast platform? This helps get the word out about the show. With that being said, in this episode, I sit down with Brooks Busser, the president of Radius International and former missionary to Papua New Guinea, and ask him the question, how can I know if I've been called to global missions? Let's dial in. Brooks, thanks for sitting down with us once again. I want to talk to you about calling. It's a term that I hear often, and I think there's a lot of ambiguity towards how we approach what is biblical calling, especially when it comes to global missions? Can you first and foremost talk about, or not foremost, just first, talk about the misconceptions regarding

calling to missions? Yeah, this is something that I hear a ton of, and usually it's young people that are looking for, am I called to be a pastor? Am I called to be a missionary? Am I called to be a construction worker? And they're looking for something that is like, they feel like a burning in their chest, or they see something in the sand, or they see something in the clouds, or like some confluence of factors outside of scripture that they're looking for. Something almost mystical is what the calling has been reduced down to. Like it's going to be something unique that will trigger in them oh this is what i'm supposed to do so i do hear that quite a bit from college and high school students and then talk to us about biblical calling if it's not something that's necessarily

experiential like often you'll hear people ask like brooks how did you know when you were called to missions how would you respond to someone else asking that very question? Yeah, no, that's a good question. The way that I have seen, and just after reading a ton on the subject of calling, is that you read your Bible, you see what it says, you head in that direction, and you make sure that your local church elders, your church leadership, knows you're heading in this direction. And if they see the same thing, that's your calling. Most, when I was leading a part of

the field over in Papua New Guinea, we had an annual conference and I asked all of the missionaries that were gathered, there was over 220, how many people had a calling? And when we're talking about calling, we're talking about like that burning sensation or some sort of sign in the sky, right? And none of them of the 220 plus, none of them had received that type of calling. They read their Bibles. They believed what it said. They moved forward and believed that the God who opens doors has the power to close doors and their local churches were on board with this. That's how they got their calling. And I think that's the most biblical way of ascertaining where you're heading with your life. So if you're talking to a young person or a young couple, and they're saying,

we're praying through this, Brooks, we're not sure what the Lord would have for us moving forward. We're in the scripture. We feel the desire to go. We're already involved in our local church, but we feel torn or just not absolutely confident. How would you speak to someone who goes, well, I'm just not totally sure. Do you need to be totally sure? Or would you just say, well, you need to go? How would you respond? I would say, keep moving, head in that direction. I look at guys like Adniram Judson and John Payton, Amy Carmichael, who never received a calling, never received that burning sensation. They just had the confirmation from their church and they were scared to death and they kept moving. Just because you have doubts, and man, when my wife and I were getting ready to head to

the field, we laid in bed at night, I don't know for how many months, thinking, are we doing the right thing? Are we taking this missions thing too far? And by God's grace, good leaders in our church kept telling us, keep going, keep moving, keep heading forward. If you don't have doubts, you're not human. But having doubts and moving forward, that's, I think, keep heading forward. If you don't have doubts, you're not human. But having doubts and moving forward, that's, I think, how the Lord works is He moves through our insecurities.

We keep moving, knowing from Scripture that this is something that He's called the church to do. And as ambassadors of the church, we keep heading in that direction until God closes the doors. So if you were speaking to someone that had certain doubts, but a desire and maybe a burden and an understanding of the need, because I think God works through needs presented in the Bible. There's a reality you mentioned in Romans 10, if the person that doesn't know God, how will they know without a preacher? People can read that and go, wow, I feel that burden. There's still some doubts you would just tell them we'll take the next step forward until god closes the door is that what you would

tell them yeah i'd want to be really clear that are they getting the input from their local church leadership because their local church will know them the best should know them the best they'll know they're gifting they'll know is this someone who has a track record of getting excited about things and not following through? Is this someone that has some medical issues that going to a cross-cultural environment may not be the best fit for them? They'll know them the best, but if their local church is saying, we could see them doing this, my advice is always going to be keep moving because it's human nature to look at this incredible obstacle, this very difficult job. And cross-cultural church planning is one of the hardest jobs on the face of the earth. And it's human to think, this is tough. I'd love to have another option. Keep going,

brother and sister. Keep going unless your local church says, nah, we actually are seeing you going a different direction. That's helpful. I once had a missionary in the Middle East tell me to be globally useful for Christ, you have to be locally committed to your church as if it's a prerequisite to know whether or not God is blessing you going out onto the field. So that's really helpful, Brooks.

Thank you for your time. No worries.