Читать книгу I didn´t ask to be gold - Patricia Adrianzén de Vergara - Страница 10

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THE CALL

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

(Isaiah 6:8)

The Lord was calling me and I could not escape Him. He spoke to me throughout the entire meeting. I remembered the first time He did this, in a similar way, about seven years ago, when He called me to the ministry. At a youth congress, my heart had the conviction that I had to clean up my life to serve Him. I was twenty years old at the time; I did not fully understand the nature of the call I was accepting. I only remember that it was a sincere and solemn moment; the desire to live to serve Him flowed through me, through my tears.

My husband (though he was not my husband, then) experienced something similar around the same time. Almost parallel to his conversion through a passage from the book of Jeremiah, he understood that God would use him as an instrument to carry his message to others if he accepted the call. And accept it he did, giving up other professional opportunities to devote himself to serving Him full time.

This common experience was one of the things that brought us together when we fell in love. We both loved God’s work and felt that working in His vineyard was the greatest privilege. Thus, God allowed us to join our lives, and this dedication served to unite us. Roger was already ministering as associate pastor in the church where we had been spiritually born. We felt our lives consecrated entirely to God’s service.

And now, His heavenly voice resounded powerfully in the depths of our hearts. Almost at the end of a service about missions, God was clearly inviting me to accept the call to go out to the mission field, to go far away and be the bearer of His message to those who had never heard of Him. His voice devastated me.

Sitting on the bench, I struggled for a few minutes, questioning him. “Why are you calling me now with this intensity, now that I am married and expecting my first child? Why didn’t you do it when I was single? How can I go like this? If my husband doesn’t feel the same way I do, Lord, it will be impossible to obey you.”

His Spirit continued to work in my heart. My soul was overwhelmed by the urgency, the need for salvation of those who were waiting to hear His message.

“All right, Lord. I will go wherever you want me to go.”

I felt my husband praying beside me. I whispered in his ear: “The Lord is calling me.” Then, to my surprise, I saw his expression was like mine. I heard him reply: “He is calling me, too.”

We stood up and dedicated our lives and our family to His work once again. We chose to obey His call and to go wherever He would send us.