CHRIS: Hi, Pastor John, my name is Chris.
JOHN: Hi, Chris.
CHRIS: I know that you’ve spent a large portion of your ministry and even your life
to training men for the ministry.
I think the building right to my left is a testament of that.
So I have a two-part question for you.
First of all, what would you say to a young man who was aspiring to be in full-time ministry,
who strongly desired it but wasn’t quite sure that he was called by God?
And secondly, what are some major pit falls that same young man should be looking out
for.
JOHN: Sure, I think I know who that young man is.
(Laughter) That’s wonderful, Chris.
Look, you’re in the same place everybody’s in.
I never had an epiphany, an angel never showed up.
I never heard a voice out of heaven.
When I looked at my own life and said, “What do I want to do?”
There were no supernatural events.
There were NO supernatural events.
All I could look at was a desire.
And I think that fits perfectly the New Testament pattern.
First Timothy 3, “If a man desires the office of an overseer, or pastor, he desires a noble
work.”
The assumption there is that this is the normal way that God indicates the calling through
desire...through desire.
And as that desire flourishes and strengthens, it becomes a singular desire.
All I can tell you is there were times in my life when I thought I would be a preacher.
Then there were times in my life when I hoped I would be a preacher.
Then there were times in the progression of that when I knew I would be a preacher.
Then there were times when I knew I couldn’t be anything other than a preacher or a pastor.
And I think it’s that desire that grows and develops.
And what grew it in me was not so much the nature of ministry itself, but my undying
passion for the book.
When I went to college, I’m not going to give you a whole lot of useless information
about my past, but my whole life I got notes that I had to take home about how bad I did
in school.
And “Johnny could do better” notes, you know?
My mother was always saying to me, “We know you can do better...”
And I was always trying to convince her, “No, no, this is it, I’m maxed out (Laughter).
I’m giving it my best shot, that’s all I can do.”
“No, you can do better...you can do better.”
And the teachers would say Johnny could do better.
The point is, I was no scholar.
I was no academic.
That was true all the way through high school.
And in college, I didn’t let my books get in the way of my education either.
I went through college from one event to another event, student life, athletics, every sport...I
played every sport in my college days.
I was involved in all kinds of activities.
As I got toward the end of my college years, I think it was my junior-senior year, the
Word of God took on a whole new depth for me.
And what it came down to was this need to know what the Bible meant.
That’s what drives me, by the way.
It’s not you that drive me, it’s this that drives me.
I really became a preacher of the Word of God because I didn’t want to do anything
in my whole life but that because I wanted to know it and I wanted to share its glorious
truths with others.
And so, it just kept developing in my heart.
And I remember when I went to seminary, remember now, I had convinced my mom that I had maxed
out with, you know, Cees and Bees, and I went to seminary and I remember the first time
I showed her my first semester report card.
She just...”I knew you hadn’t been telling me the truth all these years.”
I went through seminary and I did so well and I graduated with honors and all of that.
And there was one driving reason, I was doing what I really loved and the passion was there.
The other components of that, the desire, the growing explosive desire in your heart
that eliminates anything else, the next thing that comes along was confirmation from the
people who were saying, “You want to teach?
Let’s hear you teach.”
And that’s fine as far as it goes.
But if you say I’m called to teach and everybody says, “Oh no you’re not,” maybe you
ought to think about that.
But where there’s affirmation of your giftedness and where there’s confirmation by the leadership
of the church that your character and your giftedness fits this, so you have the laying
on of hands like in the case of Timothy.
But all the way along, sure there’s a certain sense of “Is this what I really what I ought
to do.”
Why, because there’s this nagging unworthiness, there’s this reality that how am I going
to survive?
How am I going to be faithful?
You just take it a day at a time.
I will tell you, it is the greatest joy, continues to be the greatest joy of my life.
But it continues also to be more important than it ever has been in the past, it’s
a growing joy that I have.
So there’s a certain sense in which it’s a desire, a flourishing, developing desire.
Eventually you can’t do anything but that because that begins to completely capture
your heart.
Then you have to look at your giftedness, response, affirmation from spiritual leaders
around you, set aside your fallenness because the only kind of people the Lord can use are
broken vessels, because that’s all there are.
Okay?
And when it comes to that, and I tell young guys this all the time, all ministry, all
ministry comes back to this book, all of it...all of it is informed by this book.
So when you want to get trained, get the tools to understand this book.
And then when you’ve gotten that foundation, you can go take whatever field you want, whether
you want to teach, whether you want to be in a university, what do you want to teach
in a seminary, pastor a church, or be a missionary.
But the end of the day, all ministry is a dissemination of divine truth, right?
And that’s what you want to make sure you grasp.
If you’re young enough, if you still have a little bit of doubt about whether this is
what you ought to do, and I can honestly say I had no idea when I went to seminary what
I was going to do, I just was driven to dig into the Word of God and I loved it.
I don’t think I even knew till I finally got to my third year where I would go.
But I think you can start there and if the Lord continues to make that desire flourish
that you’re going to find that you’re in the right spot.
My guess is, if that’s already a passion for you, that’s the work of the Lord in
your heart.