sepia-praying-womanAs she sat in the chapel service, she suddenly felt as if she was the only one present. Although surrounded by others, she wondered if she hadn’t experienced some type of out of body vision. Because as clearly as she knew her own name, she also knew God had just called her to serve him in ministry.

After high school, she tried to enroll in a Bible college with the plan of pursuing ministry and earning her Masters of Divinity. But she was told women would not be accepted. So instead, she enrolled in an education degree because she was certain that someone somewhere might need a Christian teacher.

After graduation from college, she served as a missionary. But her method of teaching and her desire to help her students learn how to survive when they returned to the US landed her in trouble with the chairman of her district. He wanted to send her home. Another missionary fought for her to stay. But at the end of her term, she returned to the States, feeling rejected and wondering what had happened to her “call.”

Meanwhile, she also felt God wanted her to write so she filled journals with her stories, then sent them out for publication. After several tries, editors noticed her writing and asked for more. Their needs validated her call.

Then she married and raised a child. She was active in her church and raised her son to love Jesus. She continued to write and served on staff at her church. She felt content in her service to God.

Then she walked through divorce. The “church” no longer accepted her as a minister so she worked in the corporate world, survived and began to find her true self again. Always writing, she filled her journals with her experiences and her desire to teach the Gospel – to find a niche for her words and to serve God with whatever part of her call still existed.

She sometimes felt as if she had failed God, failed to succeed as a missionary, failed to surrender to the call. If the church no longer wanted her, then maybe God didn’t either. Maybe she was another Jonah, cast into the fish of rejection, swimming around in the refuse of undigested leftovers.

Then one day, she read Romans 11:29 and although she had studied Romans and even taught it through the years, this one verse caused her soul to wonder – could God still use her? Could the original call still be alive and well in God’s timeline and would he still allow her to minister?

In the Amplified version, Romans 11:29 states, “For God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable. [He never withdraws them when once they are given, and He does not change His mind about those to whom He gives His grace or to whom He sends His call.]”

Although the ministries of the earth that require certain demographics do change, God’s call never changes. Not even divorce can change God’s call. He does not change His mind to whom He sends His call.

God would never, ever withdraw his grace. The call on her life was still intact. She merely needed to trust Him to work it all out.

2014 GateWay of Hope – The Helping Place for Hurting Women