Editor’s Note: If you have missed any articles in this series, be sure to check out the Introduction article, where you can find all of the articles that have been released.

In Sacred Rhythms, Ruth Haley Barton begins with the words, “One of the things that still surprises me this far along in life is how and when and with what power my longing stirs.” Slow for a moment and ponder her statement. Do you find yourself experiencing the same wonder?

Desire is an integral part of life. It explains why, amid our ministry task, we find ourselves facing occasional restlessness. We come to seasons when we begin to long for a new chapter. We have become comfortable, maybe too comfortable. Or maybe we have come to the end of ourselves. Sometimes they signal a divine and defining moment.

I’m reading the story of the famed explorer James Cook. After another 1,100 days at sea, prowling the southern oceans, he was done with voyaging. Given the success of his expeditions, the Admiralty offered him an honorary position as captain of a hospital for elderly and battle-scarred sailors.

Life for Cook was suddenly cozy. He was forty-six, financially free, and living with his family. The parklands were perfectly manicured, and the air was pure. It had everything anyone could want. Everything . . . but adventure.

Cook could see that a life free of exploration secretes sloth into one’s brain like a poison in the blood. His mind was still active; hence, a terrestrial boredom began to set in. He missed the open sea, the harrowing storms, the challenges that come with leading tough-minded mariners on a mission summoned by a nation.

Most of us in ministry face such moments. In contrast to that first defining moment, when God calls us into the ministry, this is a subsequent summons to a new chapter within our calling. Both require a willingness to respond, knowing God has full claim over our lives.

This next stage often comes when we have settled into our place of service, but we begin to long for a different horizon. We begin to find our gifts are no longer stretched as they once were. In what has been a place of enlargement, we begin to pick up the scent of smallness and confinement. A stirring breaks into our settledness. It might even amount to a “ferocious ambush.”

Like Cook, it might have everything to do with personal ambition. Ambition, as James Smith puts it, is “a many splendored thing.” It might be driven by pride that wants people to notice our next achievement; it might also reflect the beauty of faithfulness, especially if one aspires to use one’s gifts and respond to God’s calling. It could be that God has awakened us with a restlessness that portends a new chapter.

On the other hand, this might be the Spirit calling us to step aside and allow those with different giftings to take our ministry to a level we are not equipped to do. God may be preparing us to discover another assignment, one that may even transcend our imagination.

Finding and fulfilling the purpose of our lives comes in all seasons of our lives. When such moments come, we want to know we are fulfilling the mission to which we were called. We want to look back and see that we rightly processed the right questions:

• Did I prepare for the future by exploring and developing new and overlooked parts of myself?
• Did I come to grips with what is the truest and most authentic expression of the Spirit in and through my life?

Lives That Respond to a Fresh Summons

Looking at Scripture

David. All lives are a series of steps. At each juncture, the choices we make have significant consequences. David moved from shepherd to anointed one to fugitive on the run to a tribal chieftain leading a bunch of renegades. But a moment came when he was summoned to became David hamelekh, David the king. Over time, he progressed into a thinker, a tactical commander, a man of stature, and a man of faith. With each shift, David lengthened his stride and enlarged his embrace.

Esther. In a defining moment, Esther was challenged to something far greater than pagan royalty. God confronted Esther with a life-altering decision. Will she risk her life? Is she willing to forfeit her comfortability, move beyond her nonidentification as a Jew, and fulfill her Jewish destiny? Will she give the world the first great example of diaspora statesmanship, or be simply a queen lost in the annals of history? Will she intervene, using both her position and her strategic brilliance? She did.

Paul. In a defining moment, Paul received a vision in the night. He was invited to Macedonia to open a European theatre of operation. It marked a geographical transition for the gospel. From Philippi on, each new city brought increased opportunities, as well as rising hostilities. In another defining moment, another vision in the night, God told Paul what he told Abraham and Gideon and Daniel and Mary—and tells us—“Don’t be afraid!”

Outside of the Biblical Narrative

Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Every person, at some point, must hear from God and know what God is calling one to do. Receiving invitations to minister, Bonhoeffer entered the safety of a New York harbor on June 12, 1939. And then came a defining moment.

Amidst the fanfare, Bonhoeffer had no peace. Within twenty-four hours, he knew he must return to his church in Germany. Conversations had no meaning. He felt cut off, divided from himself by an ocean. During these days, he wandered the streets of New York like a ghost. His sense of being out of sync with himself was inescapable. Only when he arranged passage back to Germany did his uncertainty about the future cease.

Tim Keller. By all appearances, Keller had an enviable life. He and his wife enjoyed the livable Philadelphia suburbs. They loved the church and their seminary community. Shifting to teaching had become a “restful retreat from pastoral ministry.” No more lengthy elder meetings, sermon preps that leave one desperate in the night, parishioner criticisms, and hours that are demanding.

But something was happening inside the heart of Keller. God again was ambushing. Keller began to imagine the re-creation of a L’Abri in the most strikingly secular city in America. At first, he was reluctant to go to New York. Afterall, previous attempts at planting a church in this context had failed. By his own admission, Keller sensed his prayer and spiritual life wouldn’t be able to handle the scope of the project. Still, he couldn’t shake the sense of God’s palpable presence and summons.

Frederick Buechner. Reflecting on his life, Buechner found that life is always a matter of moving on. This is the human condition, one that must be considered in the language of sojourn. At each point, decisions must be made, but they are hard to remember because they more or less make themselves. Choices, as he puts it, are made “at a subterranean level,” such that one cannot take blame or credit. Perhaps we are not always as aware of the defining moment we are in.

Buechner sensed God summoning him to give himself fully to the ministry of writing. He was an instructor, but everybody seemed satisfied, and there was therefore no particular challenge from outside himself to do it any better or any differently. It was time to change course.

I could add other testimonies. What minister does not face such moments? James Houston recounts a powerful night encounter when the Spirit summoned him to leave Oxford and step into a new chapter in Vancouver, B.C. For some of us, such a defining moment may come two or three times in our lives. Or maybe it will be like Abraham Kuyper, the remarkable Dutch leader, who faced numerous moments summoning him to multiple positions.

What It Takes to Move to the Next Stage

When we look at lives confronted by a divine voice calling for a new direction or a different approach, we find these commonalities:

• They believed they were made for more than merely avoiding failure.
• They understood that if they passed on the opportunity, that voice of summons might be quieter next time. It might even pass to someone else.
• They were willing to meet the requirements that such a defining moment calls for, no matter how demanding or unnerving.

When such moments come, they command the following.

An Honest Assessment of Self

If we are to move to another stage in our lives, it is critical we pay attention to the season we are in and what is going on inside our hearts. If we are experiencing a growing restlessness, even a vague sense of emptiness, we need to know why.

Because the heart is “deceitful above all things” (Jer. 17:9), we live with thirsts that are prone to go in the wrong direction to find water. Are we distracted when we should be focused and fixed?

If a longing emerges to see boundaries expand, we must be honest about our motives. Are we seeking to gain greater respect and recognition? Get out of our “lonely backwaters” to be seen before we are forgotten? Or could this be nothing more than seizing an opportunity to escape a mounting resistance to our present ministry?

Maybe our openness to new chapters is something worthy—even holy. Faced with a world turning from God, Isaiah prayed, “Here am I. Send me” (Isa. 6:8). Perhaps this disquiet in our souls is all about seeking to step into the gap and live out the reason for which we were made.

More than aspiration, we need to assess our capabilities. Have I appraised my strengths and weaknesses? Do I know what I can and cannot do? Before I step out, have I measured my true self, aware of who God has created me to be?

David writes these telling words in Psalm 131, “I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me, but I have calmed and quieted myself.” Could it be, in a moment of severe self-assessment, David came face-to-face with his limitations?

An Attentiveness to God’s Ways

Self-assessment goes only so far. Weighing our next life decision, an overemphasis in personal appraisal can devolve into self-absorption and its attending deceptions. We must train ourselves to daily look for God.

This calls for awareness. We cannot afford to be distracted. He is an attentive God who calls his followers to wait upon his will and listen for his voice. I come back to the Senegalese proverb, “The opportunity which God sends does not wake up him who is sleeping.”

A disciplined time with God enables us to have an intuitive sense of God’s direction and timing, as well as a grasp of his heart and purpose. When opportunities arise, a life fully present to God and his Word is more able to read into what God may be saying and not saying. We will be able to tell the difference between an authentic summons from God and a foolish impulse on our part.

What must not be lost is that, for all our ports of call, we’ve been made for another shore. We are refugees ever on the move. We must see past the illusions. We navigate from one destination to the next, but there will be no enduring ministry, no “Welcome home” until we get to heaven. In the meantime, as James Houston puts it, we live dangerously on the edge, yet joyously in exile.

A Desire to Enlarge

When God summons us to a new stage, it is seldom, if ever, a lateral move. The times are urgent; there is no time for a mere change of scenery. He delights in expanding our vision, enlarging our capacity for the next assignment.

When Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood made the transition to Earlham, he wrote words similar to those we have written in our diaries: “I am ready for some other service.” It was, however, more than a simple desire for change. He had grown out of his position and wanted something more strategic. He continued, “I want a position from which I can make the largest attack on the entrenched evils of our culture which I can do anything about.”

This is the kind of ambition that should be “stewarded and fanned into flame.” Its opposite is stagnation. When we settle for the status quo, our gifts can be left unused on the table. In a defining moment, when God presents an opportunity to move to the next level, we are tempted to avoid launching into the deep. Failing to grow, however, means that we will make little impact on the deep-rooted evils of our culture.

Growth is about expanding, but it also includes refining. It requires a willingness to yield to God’s pruning. We begin ministry, stepping into each next chapter, thinking our natural interests and abilities can combine with God’s grace to achieve a noble cause. But then, God begins to cut things out, severing what will inhibit the best fruit, stripping away that which will impede one’s ability to move to God’s next venture. He will remove certain obligations so that others may grow to maturity.

A Receptivity to Wise Counsel

When opportunities come, they are not always from God. At the same time, closed doors do not necessarily signal God is saying no. This is where counsel comes in. We need voices who will not tell us what we want to hear but what we need to hear. They will ask penetrating questions:

• Why would you do this? Why would you not?
• What is your family saying?
• Out of your time with God each day, what do you hear him saying?
• Does this opening match with your gifts?
• Is the timing right?
• Have you weighed the costs? Is this wise?

A Faith that Says God Can and Will

Part of anticipating a new chapter is the conviction that God is advancing his kingdom. His mission is to make himself known and see that everything and everyone he has made flourishes. This means that he is always summoning ministers to serve.

When we submit to his call, we find that God can do the unimaginable and do it through us. More than can—he will. We may feel we are languishing where we are, but God will not leave us standing at the wrong dock.

One of my life verses is Proverbs 23:18. At a critical juncture, when I began to wonder if I would be consigned to a chapter I had outgrown, God spoke these words into my life. I took him at his word, and one year later I was living on another continent!

A Resolution to Step Out

Finally, divine moments require a readiness on our part to move from the invisible to the visible. Courage is demanded. The greater the opportunity, the greater the risk. We will have no hope of carrying it out apart from God’s strong support. The alternative is fear. We will step back and watch as someone else with greater faith steps into our place.

‘We Were Made for More’

In his book, Unfinished, Richard Stearns has a chapter entitled “We Were Made For More.” He reminds us we were not made to shuffle through our years on earth. We were not made to spend our lives trying to find our place, only to realize our lives had been used up entirely in the search.

God created us to play a role in his unfolding story—and step into each chapter. When we are convinced this next chapter is a summons from God, we are released to use our gifts in gratitude, caught up in his mission for the sake of the world.

John E. Johnson is an adjunct professor of Pastoral Theology and Leadership at Western Seminary in Portland, OR. He has served as a lead pastor for thirty five years, and currently is a writer working on his fourth book, as well as serving as an interim teaching pastor.