{"id":1338,"date":"2019-10-02T10:15:01","date_gmt":"2019-10-02T14:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-potter\/?p=1338"},"modified":"2019-10-03T10:00:24","modified_gmt":"2019-10-03T14:00:24","slug":"accountable-not-called","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-potter\/2019\/10\/02\/accountable-not-called\/","title":{"rendered":"Accountable…not called."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I like to say that I\nwas never \u201ccalled\u201d to be become a missionary. It confuses some people. \u201cWhy\nwould you do that with your life if you weren\u2019t supposed to?\u201d That\u2019s the\nconfusion right there. \u201cCalled\u201d and \u201csupposed to\u201d aren\u2019t the same thing. And I\nactually think that neither one is right when you look at what God\u2019s Word says\nabout the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two keystone passages of Scripture especially illustrate this. Matthew 28:19, 20<\/a> drop a cyclical instruction, an order that\u2019s meant to continually be repeated by everyone whose life is changed because of it. If each person who hears and believes the teachings of Jesus Christ really obeys it, they then find a way to \u201cgo therefore.\u201d And the cycle repeats. It\u2019s not a special calling. It\u2019s unavoidable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2 Corinthians 5:14, 15<\/a> teaches us about a love that should warp the trajectory of our lives. In the NKJV the phrase \u201cthe love of Christ compels us\u201d pushes away notions of waiting for a call. Instead, sacrificial love should propel us into service as \u201cministers\u201d of reconciliation. And when you combine that with the \u201cwhere\u201d in Jesus\u2019 final words in Matthew \u00a0\u2014 \u201cinto all the world\u201d \u2014 you get where I\u2019m going here? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up in a solid\nhome where parents made building blocks of understanding God\u2019s grace and\nsalvation readily available for the building of a foundation for life. I knew\nas I made my way into the grownup world of my early college years that I would\nprobably head into some ministry role in my future. But not trusting myself to\nmake the decision on what role, I went to Bible college. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was at then-New\nTribes Bible Institute where I was adding to my Biblical foundations that I had\nmy life trajectory altered in a big way. When missionary after missionary in\nchapel, in class and around the campus challenged me with the reality of\nunreached people groups and of how little work was being done to reach them, I\nrealized I had a choice to make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could take the new facts I possessed and ignore them, even though I was a member of a very small segment of people who had a grasp of how many people were truly in the dark about Truth, and head into a career of my own choosing. Or I could act on the new truth I possessed and do something about it. In the end, I felt a great sense of accountability to the facts. The stark reality is that whole people groups are living and dying, eternally separated from their Creator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, I felt a great sense of accountability to the facts. The stark reality is that whole people groups are living and dying, eternally separated from their Creator. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I knew that this has been happening for literally hundreds of generations. That\u2019s not easily ignorable. So, I took my next step \u2014 and got married \ud83d\ude09 \u2014 but chose to make my life \u2014 the prime career phase of my life \u2014 about stopping that cycle of life and death and eternal separation for even just one of the thousands of people groups still unreached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, am I called? No.\nAm I accountable? Yes.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like to say that I was never \u201ccalled\u201d to be become a missionary. It confuses some people. \u201cWhy would you do that with your life if you weren\u2019t supposed to?\u201d That\u2019s the confusion right there. \u201cCalled\u201d and \u201csupposed to\u201d aren\u2019t the same thing. And I actually think that neither one is right when you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":782,"featured_media":1339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1338","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ministry","8":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-potter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-potter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-potter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-potter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/782"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-potter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-potter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-potter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-potter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-potter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-potter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}