How Do I Know If God Is Calling Me? Four Biblical Markers

Introduction

At seventeen, Benjamin Short listens for the first time to a missionary talking about his call and his hardships. His first reaction is fear. Back in his room, he prays: “I’m ready to serve, but honestly, make sure I’m neither a missionary nor a pastor.” Five years later, he leaves for Côte d’Ivoire. He will be a missionary there for ten years, and he has now been a pastor for four years. “Let’s just say God had a good laugh at my expense.”

Invited to the missions conference of Église Baptiste Toulouse Métropole, he takes up a question that concerns everyone: how do I know if God is calling me? He says right away: “This is not a sermon on one text, but biblical criteria that I want to share with you along with what I have lived.” The next day, at the Sunday service, he will open Isaiah 6 to speak about the response to the call.

The message has two parts. First, getting rid of the false expectations, myths and fears that surround the call. Then, after prayer, giving concrete markers to discern it: the Word, conviction, circumstances and the confirmation of the church.

Outline of the Message

1. The Substitute with Headphones

Imagine the Top 14 rugby final with Stade Toulousain. In the 70th minute, the coach wants to send on a substitute. The staff rushes to the bench, but the player has headphones on and is looking at his phone. He hears nothing. Someone else goes on in his place and the match is played without him.
“He had his place on the team sheet, but he completely misses the reason why he is there.” Everyone would love to be in his place, and he is looking at his phone at the most decisive moment.
For Benjamin Short, we are living in that decisive moment. If the world goes on, it is because God wants to gather his people: it is because of his patience that we are still here (2 Peter 3:15).
If, at this moment in history, we have our headphones on, busy with our own fulfillment, we are just as inconsistent as that substitute. So the question is not only for those who think they will go far away: what is your role in this decisive moment?

2. The First Call: Fellowship with the Son

When we talk about a call, we spontaneously think of where, when and how: which job, which ministry, which country. That is legitimate, but the Bible begins somewhere else.
Paul writes: God is faithful, through whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Corinthians 1:9). This fellowship is the relationship with Jesus, abiding in him (John 15). It also means taking part in what he is doing.
Before going up to heaven, Jesus says to his eleven disciples: “Go, and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18-19). “If we do not take part in his work, our fellowship is only half there.” Keeping “my Jesus in my little relationship, in my room” while leaving his work aside is called seeking your own interest.
Student, retiree, plumber, stay-at-home mom: you are already called to live in fellowship with him and to make him known.
Starting with where, when and how leads to three pitfalls. The first: the call becomes my project, and “God is just a career counselor.” The second: we wait, sometimes for years, for a call to the other side of the world without speaking about Jesus to our neighbors. The third: our identity gets lodged in the where, when and how.
Benjamin Short lived this. For ten years, he was “Benjamin the missionary among the Jula.” Back in France, “I was nothing anymore.” Yet his identity is in his fellowship with Jesus Christ. It is on this solid ground that the questions of a place, a role, a mission or a season become legitimate.
For the Bible is clear: God calls men and women to specific missions. Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Deborah, Samuel, Jonah, Mary, the twelve, Paul. And the history of the church continues the list, like Hudson Taylor called to China.

3. First Myth: The Call Is Necessarily Spectacular

Moses before the burning bush, Paul thrown to the ground on the road to Damascus, Isaiah in the temple: these calls catch our eye. So we tell ourselves: “I never experienced that in my room, so I’m not called.”
But others were called through the community: David by Samuel, Timothy by Paul, the seven by the church in Jerusalem. Others through circumstances: Joseph sold by his brothers, Esther in the palace, Daniel deported to Babylon, Priscilla and Aquila expelled from Rome.
The preacher’s favorite is Nehemiah, who speaks of “what my God put into my heart to do for Jerusalem” (Nehemiah 2:12). “That phrase is magnificent.”
At 23, Benjamin Short is a business account manager at BNP. Apartment, car, expensive vacations: the life a young Parisian dreams of. His brother-in-law asks him to come and translate in northern Côte d’Ivoire. He leaves in 2008 with sunglasses, swimming trunks and sunscreen.
There, he meets Christians who have lost everything because of Jesus, and who sing while they pray. “Is there a bug in my software or what? I have everything the West wants to give me. They have nothing, and they have a joy that I don’t have.” He realizes that he was “a real spiritual tourist” and that the promise of happiness through success is a lie.
Back home, he asks God for this joy. No audible voice, but a thirst for the Word. He enrolls at the Bible institute in the evenings and on weekends.
In 2010, he goes back to Côte d’Ivoire, near the border with Mali, to entirely Muslim villages. He meets thousands of people who have never heard of Jesus. “I heard the gospel a thousand times in my church, and they never even had the chance to hear it once.”
He reads missionary biographies, Hudson Taylor, William Carey and others, prays for two years, then resigns in 2012. “No burning bush, no light on the road,” but a conviction that was forged: God had put something on his heart.

4. Two More Myths: Reserved for Pastors, Easy or Hell

Second myth: the call would be reserved for pastors and missionaries. “Me, my call is for Toulouse.” The preacher answers: we look for a serious call to go, but rarely a serious call to stay. To be consistent, we must also look into whether God wants you to stay where you are.
Mission must first aim at the places where Jesus is not known. But God also called Bezalel, a craftsman filled with the Spirit of God to work in gold, silver and bronze (Exodus 31:1-6). Daniel was not a priest, he was a high official in Babylon.
“God doesn’t call only pastors.” He calls the teacher, the entrepreneur, the artist, the caregiver, the stay-at-home father or mother. The banker he used to be ended up raising chickens, building a house and running a hospital, all while sharing the gospel.
Third myth: if it is God, it will be easy, or on the contrary it will be hell. Paul wants to preach in Asia, then in Bithynia, and the Spirit stops him. A vision calls him to Macedonia (Acts 16:6-10). A few days later, in Philippi, he is beaten with rods and thrown into prison, his feet in the stocks (Acts 16:22-24). “A clear call, immediate obedience, a dungeon at the end.”
The preacher hides nothing of his early days: malaria, typhoid, amoebas, worms, hospitalization and twelve kilos lost in two months. He saw occult practices and suffered from spiritual warfare.
But God does not merely send us, he changes what we want: it is he who works in us both to will and to do (Philippians 2:13). What Paul counted as gain, he counted as loss (Philippians 3:7).
“Today, I would dream of being able to relive those moments.” He does not seek suffering, but he believes that in suffering for the Lord, we taste a fellowship with Jesus Christ that cannot be found anywhere else, like the apostles who rejoiced that they had suffered for his name (Acts 5:41).

5. Before Any Criteria: Pray Seriously

To explain the criteria, Benjamin Short tells of a flight back from Côte d’Ivoire. Above Roissy, in the fog, the plane aborts the landing a hundred meters from the ground: the instrument that allows landing without visibility is not working. A detour to Toulouse, a repair, then landing in Paris.
A pilot needs his feelings, but alone, they deceive him. He needs his instruments, the control tower, which does not fly in his place, and visibility. “He has to cross-check everything, everything has to match.” It is the same for the call: the Word is the runway, conviction corresponds to the feelings, circumstances to the instruments and visibility, the church to the control tower.
But before all that comes prayer. A young man confides that he thinks he has a call. Digging deeper, the pastor discovers that he prays about it for three seconds every morning. “Listen, my friend, that’s not what praying is.”
Nehemiah prayed for four months before leaving. Jesus spent the whole night praying before choosing the twelve (Luke 6:12-13). If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask God (James 1:5). Charles Spurgeon said that God established prayer so that he might act: the people pray and, in his sovereignty, God acts.
In Côte d’Ivoire, the team digs a well with pickaxes: thirty meters, no water, then fifteen meters next to it, still nothing. A friend he was working with says to him: “Benjamin, let’s really pray.” They pray from 8 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., under the moon, pleading over every aspect and naming the villagers. The following week, a drilling rig arrives and water gushes out at fifteen meters.
Later, the first converts see their fields burned, and no one will let anyone sit next to them to talk about Jesus. The small community of about twenty people prays from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., “soberly, for all the neighborhoods.” The next day, as he goes to buy his bread, the missionary is invited by about twenty men: “Who is this Jesus of yours?” That very evening, one of them kneels and accepts Jesus Christ. “Do you think that’s a coincidence?”

6. The Runway and the Feelings: Is It Biblical? Does It Last?

First criterion: is it biblical? This is the runway. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path (Psalm 119:105). “It is a light that shines on your feet, it is not a floodlight.” The Bible will not tell you whether you should go to Senegal or stay in Toulouse.
Yet it marks out two things precisely. First, the limits: God will never call you to disobey his word. To the man who wanted to leave on a mission while leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves, Paul answers that whoever does not provide for his own has denied the faith (1 Timothy 5:8).
Then, character: God may not tell you where to go, but he tells you who to become. If your call does not make you above reproach, sober-minded, hospitable, gentle and free from the love of money (1 Timothy 3:2-3), “God needs to deal with you before your destination.”
Second criterion: inner conviction. Paul says: “Now, behold, I go bound by the Spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there” (Acts 20:22). He knew he would suffer, and he had a conviction accompanied by a deep peace.
The preacher is careful with the word peace. Having peace does not mean having no fear: “I was afraid to go to that village in Côte d’Ivoire, but I had peace and the conviction that God wanted me there.”
Alone, conviction can come from our desires, our tiredness or our pride, like the pilot’s feelings in the clouds. So the question is: does it last? A young man, “red hot” during a conference, was sure he had to go to Turkey; at the highway toll booth on the way home, the conviction had already dropped a bit. It is not an emotion, but “something you have inside you that won’t let go of you.”

7. The Instruments and the Control Tower: Does It Open Up? Do Others See It?

Third criterion: circumstances. The closed doors in Asia and Bithynia led Paul to Macedonia. Sometimes the call comes through an inner conviction, like Benjamin Short’s first departure. Sometimes it comes through circumstances, like his call to be a pastor in France.
He had no desire to come back. His wife’s illness and his daughter’s schooling forced him to. “I was at rock bottom.” Four years later, he acknowledges that God allowed these trials: without them, “out of pride, we would have stayed” doing a job that the Ivorians could do themselves.
“If we believe in the sovereignty of God, then let’s live it.” Your circumstances do not surprise God. Even when it hurts, he opens a path for you. But they must not guide alone.
Fourth criterion: confirmation. Do others see it? In Antioch, while the church worships and fasts, the Holy Spirit says: “Separate Barnabas and Saul for me, for the work to which I have called them.” After fasting and praying, they lay hands on them and send them off (Acts 13:1-3). Paul had been called since the road to Damascus, more than ten years earlier, but it is the church gathered in prayer that hears the Spirit and sends.
On the gifts side: if you think you are called to teach, do people come and ask you to explain a text? When you preach, do they listen to you or look at their watch? “The gifts God gives, others end up seeing them.”
On the leaders side: in 2010, Benjamin Short consulted his pastor, his parents, his house group leader, the elders and the council. They told him: “Yes, Benjamin, we think you are called to go.” This criterion is liberating: mission is no longer a personal adventure, but a collective adventure for which the church shares the responsibility with you.
You must also be ready to hear a no. A young man convinced he was called to Japan was told by the elders, after they had prayed for him: “We think you want to go to Japan because you simply love Japanese culture.”

8. Nehemiah Ticked Every Box

Summary: we pray first. Then: is it biblical? Does it last? Does it open up? Do others see it? When everything converges, you have to move forward. “You can be in front of a green light and not press the accelerator.”
Nehemiah hears about the need in Jerusalem and prays from the month of Chislev to the month of Nisan (Nehemiah 1:1; 2:1). The conviction: God put it on his heart. The circumstances: the king grants him everything, “for the good hand of my God was on me” (Nehemiah 2:8). The confirmation: once he arrives in Jerusalem, the people answer, “Let’s rise up and build!” (Nehemiah 2:18).
Back to the substitute of Stade Toulousain. Your headphones may be your school path, your comfortable life, your job, what the West tells you. You already have a plan for your life and you do not listen to what God is telling you.
You belong first to a person with whom you are called to live in fellowship. For the rest, “God does not leave you to guess”: he invites you to pray, he gives you his word, he can give you convictions, open circumstances, and he has given you a church. The pastor invites everyone to take off their headphones in order to listen to God.

Key Takeaways

Every Christian’s first call is fellowship with Jesus: living in relationship with him and taking part in his work. Identity is there, not in the place or the ministry.
The call is not necessarily spectacular, it is not reserved for pastors, and it is neither always easy nor necessarily hell.
Before any criteria, pray seriously and with perseverance, like Nehemiah and like Jesus before choosing the twelve.
Four questions help to discern: Is it biblical? Does it last? Does it open up? Do others see it?
Discerning is not enough: in front of a green light, you still have to press the accelerator.

Personal Application

What are your “headphones” right now: your studies, your comfort, your job, what the world tells you about your life?
Do you live fellowship with Jesus only as a private relationship, or do you also take part in his work where you are?
How much time have you really spent praying about your future and your place in God’s mission?
Have you ever looked for a serious call to stay where you are, as much as to go elsewhere?
To whom in your church could you submit a conviction you are carrying, being ready to hear a no?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if God is calling me?

Benjamin Short starts with prayer, serious and persevering prayer. He then offers four questions: Is it biblical? Does it last? Does it open up? Do others see it? Like a pilot who cross-checks the runway, his feelings, his instruments and the control tower, you move forward when these markers converge.

Is God’s call reserved for pastors and missionaries?

No. Every Christian is first called into the fellowship of the Son (1 Corinthians 1:9), which means living in relationship with Jesus and taking part in his work. God also called Bezalel, a craftsman, and Daniel, a high official. He calls teachers, entrepreneurs, artists, caregivers and stay-at-home parents, right where they are.

Do I need to feel complete peace to know that God is calling?

Benjamin Short is wary of the word peace when it is understood as the absence of fear. He believes that one can know God’s peace while still having worries: he was afraid to go to a village in Côte d’Ivoire, but he had peace and the conviction that God wanted him there. A conviction alone can come from our desires or our pride; the question is whether it lasts.