Spurgeon goes on to identify four ways by which we may assess whether we are called to ministry. First is ‘an intense, all-absorbing desire for the work’. It is in this context that Spurgeon (followed by Lloyd-Jones in the next century) urged that you should not enter the ministry if you could be content doing anything else. This is a burden which cannot be escaped—not a mere passing feeling, but a thoughtful and enduring desire. Second is an ability to teach, and other aptitudes required in ministry. It is not to be expected that a man will preach well on his first attempt, but is there growing evidence of gifts and abilities which may be developed? Thirdly, Spurgeon asks is there any ‘conversion work’ in the ministry of this man? This test needs to be understood in the context of the extraordinary fruitful days of Spurgeon’s ministry, and it is interesting that this test is not mentioned by John Newton in the letter quoted in this lecture. Finally, if someone is called to ministry their preaching ‘should be acceptable to the people of God’.

The only qualification for entry to the London Seminary Pastoral Training course is a credible call to ministry. But what does that mean? There is a sense, of course, in which all believers are called to ministry as servants of the Lord and of one another. But the term is generally used of a particular call for evangelists, pastors and teachers.
External and Internal Call?
A call to ministry is understood in two parts: the external and internal call. The external call may include the encouragement of others to consider vocational Christian ministry. A local church may give opportunities for service, and encourage towards appropriate training. Ultimately an external call is a church calling someone to be their pastor; this may look slightly different in Baptist/ congregational and Presbyterian circles, but essentially it is the affirmation that a man is called to ministry.
The internal call is more controversial. In recent times the internal call has been downplayed or even disregarded. One pastor said to me: ‘The only call I received was a telephone call’ (from church leadership inviting him to take up the pastorate). While historically the internal call was treated seriously, now it is questioned. One turning point was the publication of a book on guidance: Decision Making and the Will of God.[1] The author emphasised the importance of moving away from a mystical understanding of God’s will towards more rational decision making based on biblical principles. The book is very valuable, and helped many who were struggling to find God’s will for their lives based on feelings or circumstances. However, the pendulum then swung to the opposite extreme, and the idea of internal call tended to be discarded altogether.
We can all understand the challenges and problems associated with an ‘internal call’. We don’t want to be governed by our feelings or subjective impressions of what the Lord might or might not be directing us to do; our feelings are not a reliable guide. Sometimes we don’t make good judgements about our own gifts, and strengths and weaknesses. We might believe that we are great preachers, but we should heed godly believers in the congregation who tell us that our sermons are uninspiring or unhelpful. We might dream that we have leadership potential, but if we find that no-one is willing to follow us, we may be mistaken. Our own convictions have to be tempered by the counsel and advice of trusted brothers and sisters in the Lord, and especially by our church leaders.
On the other hand, we might be very reluctant to go forward into ministry and we need the encouragement and spur of others who recognise our gifts and calling and advise that we are allowing our natural reticence to quench the Lord’s call. Some of the great prophets of the Old Testament, including Moses and Jeremiah, were reluctant because of their own sense of inadequacy and unworthiness. An historical example is John Calvin who had no inclination to take up ministry in Geneva and had to be very severely rebuked by Guillaume Farel.
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As one Old Testament scholar has put it, “I like the New Testament, because it reminds me a lot of the Old Testament.” Indeed, the New Testament should remind us of the Old Testament, because every page of the New Testament (and often every paragraph) is filled with quotations, allusions, and echoes from the Old Testament.

Have you ever watched a new movie, where you started 10 minutes before the end?
Many years ago, when big hair was still in style, I was introduced to Back to the Future in this way. My friends were watching this movie and I joined them at point where Doc Brown crashed through garbage cans, warned Marty and his girlfriend about their future children, and drove to a place where “we don’t need roads.”
If you only know the last ten minutes of Back to the Future, however, you won’t understand the significance of the DeLorean, the date (November 5, 1955), the speed (88 miles per hour), or the electricity (1.21 Gigawatts) that makes time travel possible. Nor will you understand the flux capacitor and its cruciform power to rewrite history. All of these details are revealed over the course of the movie and only in watching the movie from beginning to end, can you make sense of its ending.
Something similar happens when we open our Bibles and behold the man hung upon a Roman cross. While many well-intentioned evangelists point to Christ’s cross as the center piece of our Christian faith and the way of our salvation, it is an event in history that only makes sense when you begin in the beginning. That Christ was buried in a garden tomb does more than give us an historical referent; it tells the significance of Christ’s death as the way of God’s new creation, because after all it was in a garden where Adam sinned and brought death to the world. Now, raised from a garden tomb, Jesus as the new Adam has introduced a new way of life.
In this vein, the biblical storyline is necessary for understanding why the Son of God had to die on a tree, be buried in a tomb, and raised to life on the third day. Indeed, even if we know that Christ did not stay dead—that he rose from the grave, walked the earth teaching his disciples for forty days, and ascended to heaven, where he now sits in glory—we cannot make sense of the cross. Or at least, our interest in Christ’s death and resurrection leads us to ask: But what does it mean?
Indeed, the way to understand Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is to place those events in the timeline of God’s redemptive history. That timeline begins in creation, proceeds through the fall of mankind into sin, and picks up countless promises of grace and types of salvation throughout the Old Testament. In fact, to be most precise, God’s plan for Christ’s cross did not begin in space and time; it began before God spoke light into the darkness (Gen. 1:3). As Peter says in his first sermon (Acts 2:23) and his first epistle (1 Peter 1:20), the cross of Christ was the centerpiece of God’s eternal plan for the salvation of his people.
In Scripture, therefore, the cross is the climactic work of God to redeem sinners and rescue the dying.
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The path of peace is a precious one. There you hear the promise of God’s presence, you find hope and assurance that there is still more peace to be had in Jesus, and you receive a benediction. “Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way. The Lord be with you all” (2 Thess. 3:16). This is worth working for.

We have heard the message of forgiveness, but the signal becomes weak with certain sins. For example, do you have regrets? Persistent regrets often carry a message that says to the Lord, “What I did was really bad, and I feel really bad about it”—a message that can quickly drift toward legalism that acts as though deeper contrition will find more grace. You will not find peace on that path. We can be prone to categorizing sins into our own eclectic version of venial and mortal sins. Common sins such as speeding and a brief loss of temper are easily forgiven; uncommon and public sins are not. Look for old sins to which you privately say, “I can’t believe I did that.”
Regrets might be a result of the continued consequences of those sins. For example, if your negligence left you or other people with enduring struggles, those reminders are persistent and weighty. Yet regrets can never be left unattended. They are evidence that all things have not yet been made fully new, though they will be. Meanwhile, God forgives fully from all iniquities (Ps. 130:8), for “with him is plentiful redemption” (Ps. 130:7). He forgives completely because He is the forgiver, not because you are forgivable. He washes you clean; He Himself does not see you according to your sins, but you share in how the Father sees the Son as, by faith, you have been joined to the Son. Also notice how the Apostle Peter writes that spiritual malaise can be a result of forgetting that we have been cleansed from “former sins” (2 Peter 1:9). Regrets from past sins are not to be trifled with. Best to give them fully to God as a way to honor the work of Jesus Christ.
Look, too, for sins done against you, especially by those who were responsible to love you. As a general rule, if you have been treated disgracefully, you believe you are a disgrace, and you are left on high alert for when your disgrace will be fully exposed. Peace cannot abide with such shame. That path toward peace is possible only when shame is met by hope that “those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed” (Ps. 34:5).
Things future. Even without resonant guilt and shame, we all have our fears and anxieties, and these likewise compete against peace. Many of those fears are well founded. A very hard event may, indeed, be at hand. And these fears appear against a backdrop of fears and anxieties that are present no matter what the forecast. In my own life, if I simply turn my attention to my children and grandchildren, I find that there might be a passing moment in which everything seems fine, and then I suddenly remember one trouble, then another; one future danger, then another.
All this is to say two things. First, if you feel burdened and anxious, Jesus’ words of peace are directed to you. Second, peace will encounter more resistance than you might expect.
Peace Pursued
Now the work continues. We all desire peace, but we don’t all pursue it. We might seek peace as an occasional hobby rather than a need that borders on desperation. So we proceed by remembering that this is a promise of God to us, and we can insist that His Spirit lead us on the path of peace.
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