Who Are You to Judge Another's Servant?

How can we justify telling others what God wants them to do with their lives, such as what career they should pursue, where they should live, or how they should raise their children? Though I could go into detail about different ways in which Christians judge each other, including matters of Christian freedom (the original context for the title of this article, Romans 14:4), I need to focus on the call to missions and ministry. I’m going to take a page from Jason Holt at this year’s AFLC Youth Worker’s Retreat and ask all my readers to raise their right hands and repeat after me: “I am not the Holy Spirit.” I admit that God at times uses a harsh word from another Christian to challenge or teach us, but I don’t think that gives us license to play that role.

Some Christians try to issue the call to missions themselves. I may thoroughly understand that I cannot bring someone to salvation, but I also cannot truly call someone into ministry. Only the Holy Spirit can speak to someone’s heart in that way. Many of my friends from Bible School, particularly the men, felt a good deal of pressure to become pastors or overseas missionaries, whether or not they had been called by God. Many of my classmates went into youth ministry after Bible School as well, many of them with no conviction except that youth ministry is what Bible School graduates should do. These expectations, whatever their origin, plant seeds of confusion and guilt that are certainly not from God.

Then there are the naysayers. If those who push their brothers into ministry are playing the Holy Spirit, those who try to discourage their brothers from their calling are playing the devil, as Peter did in Matthew 16:23, which should be a sobering thought. It can be as subtle as saying, “Why would you go overseas when we need you here?” People from all over the world are coming to the Midwest, which means opportunities for reaching the unreached are increasing exponentially there. However, if we use this fact to dissuade someone from ministering in Somalia, we are messing with Another’s business.

Another way that I can fall into judging is when I see someone who is in a crisis regarding her calling. When we say that God has a unique plan for each of His children, we do not know the half of it! Over the last few years two of my girlfriends have had surprising detours in ministry. One of them met the love of her life right before leaving for the field and quickly married him, and though they decided to wait for him to finish school, they are now preparing for a ministry together. The other left her boyfriend for the field just as they were becoming serious, saying that she had to obey God’s call, and they were reunited while she was on medical furlough and he was on a military base in the same country. She is married and living back in the States now, and God has given her new dreams.

If you are guilty of meddling with God’s work in someone’s life, I pray you will be humble enough to confess it and draw back. My dad showed me this example when I was in college and thinking about teaching overseas. When I told him I thought Iraq would be an amazing place to teach, he told me bluntly that I was not going there. A few weeks later we talked again and he apologized. He told me that if God wanted me to go to Iraq or anywhere else in the world, I would certainly have to go. Encourage your fellow Christians to please God and not man!