My Call to Christ and His Service

This is the testimony and challenge that I shared at a seminary chapel in Crato, Brazil, in September 2005:

John 15:7  “If ye abide in Me and My words abide in you ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you.”

Early in my life I realized that receiving whatever I asked of God would happen as I accepted His desires as my own.  The desires that He gave to me were to be a pastor and to be a missionary.  My testimony is that God’s Word is true, God gave me these desires and He has been fulfilling them.  Being allowed to be here with my dear brothers and sisters in Brazil today is part of that.  Although I have believed God to be good for a long time, every day I am more certain!

I was brought up in a family with Christian parents who were away from the Lord for several years but had come back to Him at about the time I was born.  This meant that I had parents who loved the Lord sincerely with a realization of how desperate life can be without Him.  They also had, and still have today, a burden for lost souls that is contagious.

With that kind of a family it is not entirely surprising, but it is still wonderful, that I came to trust Christ as my Savior at the age of four.  Someone here asked me how I could understand salvation at the age of four, my answer is that I understood it very simply, the only way that anyone can receive it.  I was taken to church every time the doors were open since I was born, and we had devotions as a family almost every day of my childhood, but there was no question that I was a sinner.  I had a pastor who was not afraid to preach about hell, and he put it on a level that I could understand.  It was after a church service on September 16, 1973, that I knelt beside my bed to beg the Lord to save me.  The next day I told my father what I had done and he took me through the Scriptures to be sure that I understood my decision.  I was baptized a few years later at the same time as my newly-saved grandmother!

Now, about this verse, notice that there are conditions set for having our prayers answered.  They are that we abide in God and have His Word abide in us.  That has never come easily for me.  I was a disobedient rascal as a child and especially as a teenager.  I would have times of repentance, though, and I always knew that the Lord wanted to use me.  At the age of 11 I formally surrendered my life to the Lord’s service.  Even while I was a sneaky, selfish, trouble-making youth I was involved in many ways in my church and went on several missions trips.  I worked in AWANA, a bus ministry, and Children’s Church.  We ministered with American Indians, Haitian refugees in Miami, retired missionaries, a new church plant, and at a Christian camp.  The Lord was giving me valuable experience even before I had fully surrendered to Him.  A new pastor that came to my church took me in as an apprentice and taught me a great deal.

In my last year of High School I had begun dating the girl who would be my wife, and I began to get serious about preparing for the ministry.  The Lord still did not have my dedication on a consistent basis though, until I got into Bible College and began to faithfully have personal devotions.  You see, I had not been abiding in God because His Word was not abiding in me!

While in college I was given the opportunity to serve as a youth leader in a church and remained with that ministry for three and a half years.   Seeing how much I needed the Lord’s help in His service taught me to apply myself to my studies like I never had before.  I also grew more mature as I got married while in college and carried the financial responsibility for my education and that of my wife as well.  She trained as a teacher and put me to shame with her almost perfect grades.

I started school with very little money and a small scholarship which I lost when I married.  I learned then to work hard at several jobs and to earn an academic scholarship to pay our way through school.  I often worked more than 40 hours a week, carried a full class load, and spent the entire weekend at our church ministry 150 kilometers away.  Yet it was the Lord Who carried us through and we did it with great joy, still finding time to make good friends and play Volleyball and Ping Pong!

During our last year of school I took on a new ministry as an interim pastor, and that led us to the planting of a new church just before we graduated.  Because I had a burden to be used of the Lord in training missionaries in America and visiting foreign fields I continued to study after receiving my Bachelor’s Degree.  I wanted to come to places like this and be something more than a tourist.  The Lord was calling me to make myself more useful to Him through further training.  I just kept at it, not really stopping until last year when I had all of the degrees that my school had to offer for pastors.

As I have said, I count it a great privilege and a fulfillment of God’s promise to be here in Brasil today.  I did not ask Him to take me to a certain country, but to use me wherever there were precious souls that needed to be saved, and willing workers with a burden to reach them.  My church in Wild Rose is honored to have a small part in the ministry of the Willsons, and if the Lord is willing we will keep the church alive and make it grow.  Then it can do more yet to further the work here, and in Mexico, and in Italy, and in Tanzania, and in Cuiaba Brasil, in New York City, and in Wisconsin.

I have spoken of my calling specifically, let me say a few words about the calling which we all share.  Acts 5:17-20 "Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him, (which is the sect of the Sadducees,) and were filled with indignation,  And laid their hands on the apostles, and put them in the common prison.  But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said,  Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life."

That passage can serve as an illustration of what the Lord is asking of each of His children.  This passage illustrates my ministry calling, and perhaps it will be a challenge to you as well.  The apostles had been imprisoned by the high priest and Sanhedrin for doing God’s work, but the Lord did not want them out of service for long, in fact they did not even get the whole night off!

An angel was sent to break them out of jail and give them God’s orders.  First he said that they were to “Go.”  They had no cause to feel sorry for themselves or permission to take it easy and lie low for a while.

The angel also said that they were to “stand.”  That meant that their ministry would be open, and particularly that they were being sent out into the court of the temple even though that was very near to the men who had commanded their arrest!  “If our gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost.”  The people needed to see their determination and conviction and they needed to hear their message.

That brings us to the angel’s third command, for God’s men to “speak.”  They had something to say and they refused to be made quiet by any threat.  It is hard to keep good news to yourself, but when it may be dangerous or uncomfortable for us to speak up we can often find excuses for silence.  Now let us apply these three commands to Christian life and ministry.  I particularly want to point out how important it is that we obey all three together and do not leave any one undone.

What if we are willing to stand and speak but do not go anywhere?  I am afraid we will be like a great many of the Lord’s people today.  Sometimes we treat our churches like traps, we are just waiting for the lost to come in so that we can spring upon them with the gospel.  That is great, we should do that, but let us make that our Sunday strategy, the rest of the week is hunting season and we need to go out to where the game is, wherever the Lord sends us, near or far away.

What if we are willing to go and speak but we do not really stand for anything?  We are not only disobedient, we will be totally ineffective. The Lord has designed His work to be done as a harmony of sound doctrine, pure testimony, and compassionate outreach.  Too many have gone to a mission field or church ministry and have become so much like the lost that they are no good to them.

Let me say one more thing about standing firm in the ministry, and illustrate it.  I used to push the limits of Christianity with things that were new and exciting which I felt that I had liberty to do.  During college the Lord impressed upon me the necessity of standing “fast,” or “firm” which He commands many times.  Remember this: the way you lean is the way you will fall.  Are you technically standing in obedience, but beginning to lean?  The world the flesh and the devil will push us at every opportunity and often right in the direction that we are leaning.  We will have a much better chance of staying true and straight if we are not leaning.  Are you conservative, but leaning contemporary?  Are you standing pure but leaning toward worldliness?  Are you standing in what is right but leaning toward compromise?  The way you lean is the way you will fall.  The safest stance is the straightest one!

Lastly I ask you, what good will we do for the lost if we go to them and stand faithfully, but do not speak the gospel?  A silent witness is no witness at all, the truth must be spoken or it is not rightly lived.  We cannot take this for granted among God’s people.  Sadly, there are many evangelistic efforts that never get to a clear presentation of the gospel!

I am so glad that a pastor answered his calling to go to Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.  I am so glad that he stood for pure living to remain in the ministry, and that he stood for the truth of God’s Word.  I am also very glad that he spoke the whole gospel, the terrible penalty of sin and the hope of salvation.  His obedience made all the difference of eternity for me!