ARE WE CALLED?
From time to time we are presented with extreme opposites in connection with the duty of preaching. On the one hand, it is very easy to use loosely expressions like "We are ambassadors for Christ", 13 and seem to speak as though the Lord has picked out ourselves personally for special tasks which He has communicated to us, much as He chose the apostles in the first century. But on the other hand it is also all too easy to say, "We are not apostles. It was not to us that the Lord said, 'Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature'; and therefore we do not need to go. All we need to do is to accept the tasks which come to hand. To go out and seek opportunities to preach in other lands, or even in other cities, is no business of ours."

As to the former, we ought to be careful before we take titles like "ambassador" to ourselves. The office of the apostles was much higher than our own. We do not have the same specific instructions to go here, or refrain from going there, 14 which the Lord gave to his first disciples. There is a certain element, perhaps, of arbitrariness in our decisions where to go and preach, if we do feel moved to sever ourselves from our accustomed environment at all.

Yet this can be carried too far. These are the days of no open vision, indeed, but they are not days in which sincere prayer passes unheard. They are days in which none of us would claim, "God said to me that I must remove and settle in Ruritania, and who was I that I should withstand God!" But this is not to say that those devoted brethren and sisters who have said in their prayers, "I am ready to go whither it shall please Thee to direct my steps; show me the way in which I must go", have been left without God's blessing in what may later have come upon them. Even though God does not in explicit revelation come before us and, naming the place and time, say, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" This in no way makes it improper, as the crying need over all the world makes itself felt to us, for our brethren and sisters to say, "Here am I, send me!" - and believe that God in unseen ways may direct their paths.

So the answer is, I think, Yes, we are called to serve, and have our various talents for doing so. The need for service in all fields is greater than ever, and the labourers no more abundant. In praying the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth labourers into the harvest, 15 we may also commit our thoughtfully and humbly contrived plans into His hand for His blessing, and believe that it will not be withheld. Indeed, the blessings which have overflowed from God's hand into the fields of missionary labour, notwithstanding all the setbacks and constant anxieties, bear evident witness to the fact that He has not been displeased that His name should have been named through the lips of our missionary brethren.