Welcome back to Aspastor John. This summer Pastor John is out of the studio preaching in Belfast in Scotland before returning to the States for a 40-day writing leave to finish up a book on Providence on the sovereignty of God.

A book he started last summer and hopes to finish this summer.

I cannot wait to see it and all of it. The travel, the book writing and this very podcast is all made possible by you.

We are supported by the prayers and the funding of God's people. So thank you for generously investing in this important and eternal work.

So with Pastor John Busy we're diving into our archive of 1500 episodes and this summer we're pulling out some of your favorites.

About once every 50 episodes we release one that touches a nerve and touches the 300,000 play mark.

These are the elite episodes in our six and a half year history. We only have about 30 of them and here's one of them.

We get so many questions from listeners who are wondering about God's calling for their lives.

Who should I marry, what field should I pursue in school, what job should I take, where should I live, and of course where should I be serving in ministry.

Glenn, one such listener asks Pastor John, how do I know if the Holy Spirit is calling me to international missions? What would you say?

Let me start by saying that's the right question and the reason I say that is because a student just asked me two days ago whether I agreed with Hudson Taylor's comment that no one needs a call to go into missions but only a call to stay.

Everyone should be planning to go to the unreach peoples and then God may stop you and call you to stay.

And I said to the student, I don't agree with that. I don't think that's the biblical pattern. It may have some things to commend it in terms of compassion and proportion.

And we should listen to those things but biblically I can't support it regularly.

God called his prophets not the other way around and God does not say that man should all plan to be pastors unless they're called not to be pastors or elders.

Rather he sets up patterns of assessment and assumes that relatively few, just the needed number will be led into the office of pastor, teacher, elder, shepherd and Paul writes to the Romans to solicit their support in his mission to Spain and he doesn't say a word about anyone in Rome going with him.

And all the epistles of the New Testament are written with the explicit or implicit assumption people stay right where they are salt and light in their present vocations like Paul said in 1 Corinthians 720 each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.

So that's the right question. That was my point. Glenn is asking the right question. So let's start with Romans 12 to do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

So discerning the will of God assumes a renewed mind. I am assuming that the will of God here refers not to commandments of scripture, which you don't need a renewed mind to read and know.

Like that should not kill you don't need a renewed mind to know that's against the will of God. I'm assuming that what Paul is talking about in Romans 12 to is how do biblical teachings and all the other relevant factors conspire to produce a direction for my life that God approves and will bless which leads now to a second thing.

That renewal comes mainly through the word of God and prayer. So when it says be renewed in your mind, I think you mean soak your mind, marinate your mind, saturate your mind with the word of God.

Christian mind is shaped by the word of God all the while praying, praying, praying. Oh God, shape me. Oh God, make me. Oh God, bring me into conformity to this word at the depths of my being now out of that renewed mind and that prayerful experience.

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