The Calling

 As I set silently listening to the choir practice their songs on my last Friday in Brazil I picked up a magazine to glance through. Now my first language is not Portuguese and as for it being my second language, my grasp of it is far from this category. But there were pictures, and thus I was interested. It was the May 2013 issue of Adventist World it contained a summarized history of the Seventh day Adventist church. Near the end of the issue there were some bubbles that contained what looked like statistics so I began to decipher what I could of these numbers and I came to a shocking realization. This short and condensed page had listed the number of church members on the books as of 2011. Now that’s not the surprising part, the part that took me aback was the number of persons who are baptized members,  a whopping 17,214,683 Adventist church members. Now you may be saying “Wow! What a number that’s amazing! The word is spreading!” But this people, is in fact, as far as I can tell a horrible number! First of all let us realize that roughly calculating from the 7 billion people the reside on planet earth this leaves approximately   6,982,785,317 persons who we either unknown to one of our church members,have accepted another belief system or have simply been disregarded. Broken down for you this means that for every church member there is approximately 407 lost or wandering souls to reach! Now I want you to think about that number, 407 now that is a huge number for one person! You!  Yeah, you need to start a mega-church… Your outreach, your witness, and your testimony is needed to reach a small town or large village! Often we sit comfortably in our pews  on sabbath morning saying Amen when we are supposed to, comforting our struggling brothers and sisters with the empty promise of prayers and reciting our Weekly rehearsed Good mornings and Happy Sabbaths!  Now you may be thinking, “But there are people for that, people God has called like pastors who go off to school to learn this stuff, elders and deacons who have been voted by the church, missionaries who go to foreign countries  and people who were born leaders.”So Here is a news flash just for you, GOD HAS CALLED YOU!! Yeah you, you the person who complains as they drive to work every morning because the traffic is rough forgetting that the homeless person waiting at the stop light holding his poorly written sign begging for money longs to sit in your place. You can try to downgrade yourself so you feel less responsible but the truth God has called you! When he placed you in the environment you are in he said “I have equipped you to be a witness to these particular people!” The missionary who is in Thailand is not coming by your work tomorrow to witness to your coworkers with whom you converse every day.  When you took your baptismal vows and died to your earthly self as your body was plunged into your watery grave you made a promise, maybe it was a broken moment at three in the Morning when you felt the pull of God upon your hearts deepest corners and you fell to your knees alone in the dark and turned your life over to him either way He has called you! There are at least 407 people out there who are waiting on you! You are needed, you are wanted, and you are called! I am not saying you all need to go out and preach a sermon or creep people out by simply walking up to them and asking if they know Jesus.  Accept YOUR call not someone else’s! Be a witness in ALL you are. Make Christianity more then a religious title enable the world to see the reflection of Christ through you. We are all called to be disciples! Follow, reflect and testify of the God you claim to follow, of the God you call upon when times are tough and the God whose love is explained in the well known verse in John 3:16! This is your wake up call, for God does not call the qualified but rather he has and will continue to qualify the called! ” And he said to them,’Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole of creation.” Mark 16:15