Chapter 2 The Inward Call: What You Feel Inside

The Inner Witness You Can't Ignore The inward call to ministry is not a feeling, exactly. It is more persistent than that. It is the thing that won't leave you alone no matter how many times you try to quiet it. It is the pull toward preaching when you are supposed to be sleeping. It is the way your heart moves when you see a congregation without a shepherd. Charles Spurgeon described it this way: if you can do anything else and be satisfied, do it. But if the call is real, you will find no rest until you answer it. That is the nature of the inward call. This is not to say it always feels good. Many genuinely called pastors describe their early sense of calling as something they resisted. They argued with it. They tried to redirect it. They hoped it would go away. It did not. "But if I say, "I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name," his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot." — Jeremiah 20:9 Three Marks of a Genuine Inward Call First, a genuine desire to shepherd and teach. Not just to speak publicly, not just to be respected, not just to influence — but a real love for people and a specific desire to open the Word and feed them from it. If you don't actually want to shepherd people, that's worth examining. Second, a persistent return. A genuine call doesn't disappear when you get tired of it. It comes back. You may have seasons of doubt, seasons of exhaustion, seasons when you wonder if you misread everything. But the call returns, pressing on you with the same weight it always had. Third, a suffering you can't escape. Ministry is costly. If you are only drawn to the platform and the respect and the title, that will not survive the first season of real pain. The inward call doesn't just attract you to ministry's benefits — it prepares you to pay its costs. The genuine call survives resistance. If you can talk yourself out of it with enough effort, it was probably ambition. If it keeps coming back no matter how many times you set it down, pay attention. What Doubt Feels Like Almost every called pastor doubts his calling at some point. Usually more than once. This is not a failure. It is part of the refining process. Doubt about your calling often comes in three seasons: when ministry is very hard and you are exhausted, when you experience significant failure or criticism, and when you look at someone else's ministry and wonder why yours looks nothing like it. In those moments, return to the beginning. What did God do in you? What did He say? What did others confirm? When the fog rolls in, anchor yourself to what was clear before the fog arrived. The call was real then. It is still real now.