If You Can Do Anything Else, Do That

“The first sign of the heavenly calling is an intense, all-absorbing desire for the work. In order to a true call to the ministry there must be an irresistible, overwhelming craving and raging thirst for telling to others what God has done for our own souls; what if I call it a kind of storge, such as birds have for rearing their young when the season is come; when the mother-bird would sooner die than leave her nest . . . ‘Do not enter the ministry if you can help it,’ was the deeply sage advice of a divine to one who sought his judgment” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 26).