A Call to Preach

Santa Fe (Railroad) Road-Master O.B. Scott (nicknamed "Scotty") only had an eight grade education but he possessed a pointed common sense vocabulary. One of the more humorous cliches came after listening to a preacher that was particularly hard to listen to. It was almost certain that you would hear Grandpa mutter just loud enough for us to hear..."When that fellow saw in the clouds G P, he thought God was telling him to Go Preach when God was probably saying Go Plow".

Of course there is much more to the call of God to preach than a formation of clouds. It truly must come from, as one my mentors, missionary Elmer Deal taught me,

"a deep conviction accompanied by peace in the heart and confirmed by the Word of God that God would have you do a certain work in a certain place."

I have thought about that a lot since God called me to preach. There MUST BE a Divinely empowered connection between the hearers and the preacher. Having a message from God that needs to be imparted to people by way of preaching carries a tremendous weight of responsibility on the one who is called to preach. Courage to say what is unpopular to the audience within earshot and a willingness to look beyond the faces and say the hard stuff. Having preached thousands of times, (some of which... and more than I care to admit... were not messages clearly communicated) it is still fresh in my mind the importance of today's pointed message. Positive and negative. Comforting and convicting. Relevant and cross-cultural. Heaven sent and earthly delivered.

More than ever in my lifetime we need to hear from heaven. That STILL takes place by the preacher who has a definite call from God accompanied by the touch of God to preach the Word of God!

Warren Wiersbe put it like this "The touch of God makes the difference between success and failure. God touched Isaiah’s lips to give him purity ...and Jeremiah’s lips to give him power. He touched Jacob’s hip and gave him a limp, thus helping him to become a “prince with God.” God touched Daniel and set him on his feet, gave him strength, and opened his mouth for ministry. The call of God and the touch of God must go together or we fail."