The call of God comes to us through the means of human voices and His Holy Spirit.
For this purpose [God] called you through our proclamation of the good news, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The call of God comes to us through the means of human voices. As we hear the good news about Jesus from preachers or friends, in church services, in casual conversations, or in written form, our heart hears the voice of God, calling us through the Spirit into a relationship with him. Knowing that God uses human beings to call people encourages us to talk about faith openly, but without feeling as if the responsibility for conversion is somehow ours. As we bear witness to the gospel through our words and deeds, God is at work.
We have seen that the Apostle Paul uses the language of calling to describe what happens when we first put our faith in Jesus Christ. Thus, Christians can be described as “those who are the called” (1 Corinthians 1:24). We are followers of Jesus because God called us to believe the good news of salvation by grace.
But, we might wonder, how does this calling to faith really happen? By what means does God call us into a relationship with God through Christ?
We get an answer to this question in 2 Thessalonians 2:14. There, Paul explains to the Thessalonian Christians that God “called you through our proclamation of the good news.” More literally, the original language reads, God “called you through our gospel [euangelion].” Paul uses the expression “our gospel” as a shorthand way of referring to his preaching of the gospel. When the Thessalonians heard Paul tell the story of what God had done in Jesus Christ, they were hearing more than merely a human voice. They were also hearing the voice of God calling them to Himself.
Many Christians can relate to this account of calling from their own experience. For example, I have spoken before of how I first came to faith in Jesus Christ. When I was six years old, I heard Billy Graham preach in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and I went forward to “accept Jesus into my heart.” I heard the call of God through the preaching of Billy Graham.
But sometimes people hear God’s call from something other than actual preaching. A woman in my church in Irvine heard and responded to God’s call as I was saying the words of institution at a communion service. I know many people who heard God’s call through the testimony of a friend or family member. My son first heard God’s calling as he watched a children’s version of the Jesus Film. A man I know actually heard God’s call when he discovered a religious tract on a picnic table. As he read it, he heard and responded to God’s call and gave his life to Christ. This man, by the way, is one of the brightest and most thoughtful people I know, with a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale. His story reminds us of the creativity and freedom of God in calling us to Himself.
The fact that God calls people through human words, whether preached, shared, or written, encourages us to be channels of the good news to others. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we need to start preaching to stadiums full of people. And it really doesn’t mean we should become the sort of rude people who put off others by pressuring them to come to faith. When we realize that what draws people to say “Yes” to Christ is God’s calling, then we are set free to talk about faith without worrying that the results depend on us.
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