I'm reading out of the common English Bible, the book of John, chapter 15 verse 16, and Jesus is speaking. You didn't choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you could go and produce fruit, and that your fruit could last. As a result, whatever you ask the Father in my name, He will give you the word of God for the people of God. And humble, just stand before you today.
I have just got to make a comment. I love this fancy drawing. I don't know who came up with that idea, but it worked for you to please, and it sounded great. I'd like to share a song with you this morning that I actually learned before I ever went into ministry, and whoever wrote the song expressed a sentiment that I feel sure we've all had as Christians, if we've accepted Jesus as Lord has ever, we've asked the question, why have you chosen me?
And then he also has a response that I hope each of you, as I have, have accepted and responded to him. So this morning, start out by singing, why have you chosen me? You know to be a song, words that I repeat to myself almost I, why Lord, why did you choose me? And yet you did, so use me.
What'd you pray with me? Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. I don't remember ever not knowing, could Jesus was. I grew up in church.
My parents raised me in church. There was never a question about what we were going to do on Sunday morning. So even if I was late, out late on Saturday night for some reason, which one often I was feeling new, we were getting up and going to church on Sunday morning. When I was able to go to church camp, oh, I looked forward to the summers.
I didn't miss a year after that. December before I started second grade, we had a revival to celebrate moving into a new sanctuary in a little country church that I attended. We had to build a brand new church. And my best friend and I looked at each other that night and said, we want to be baptized.
So we walked down. We were baptized. Now in our own country church, we might have looked more Baptist. We didn't have confirmation classes and whatever.
We went down and we were baptized. Now, did I fully understand what I had done? Probably not. But I knew I loved Jesus.
And I took those vows that commitment very seriously. I never forgot that. Now I started taking piano lessons when I was in second grade. And by the time I was a teenager, I was playing the church.
The piano and church. So not all the time. I was active in the youth group at all levels. We had sub-district and district meetings.
And during those years, then I grew in my relationship with Jesus Christ. So I don't know how to tell, but I've heard some folks say that if you can't tell me the moment that you accepted Jesus, did you say it? Then you end me and say, I'm sorry. I don't buy that.
It was a process. I first knew about Jesus from the stories I heard in Sanzco, I named church, and he filed a school. And I grew in that relationship until I guess I fully accepted who he was and that he was my savior. I don't know how your school systems were, but the one that I grew up in, we had special programs or assemblies about once a month.
And it could be a magic show or a motivational speaker. A variety of programs. But I remember one in particular. The author of the book, I found God in Soviet Russia, was our speaker.
And that moved me deeply. Now I can't tell you exactly where all my timeline happened, but I'm thinking that it was probably in close proximity to the kind of John F. Kennedy was assassinated. We all have these things in our head that they're marked by, especially the answer things that happen.
But what I do remember is on the Sunday following his assassination, I walked down the aisle in my little country church, and informed my congregation that I felt like God had called me to full-time Christian service. Now what did that mean? I was in a little country church. I was in a church that was one of three that my pastor served.
There were no secretaries, there were no education directors. We didn't have a choir director. We were lucky to have somebody play the piano. So my limited knowledge of what it meant to be in Christian service was your own missionary.
Okay Lord, I've got this. I go to school and be a nurse and I'll be a medical missionary. Again, I was a sophomore in high school. So I had not developed a deep prayer life.
I was still growing in my relationship and in my spiritual life. And even at that time, I had already been offered a voice scholarship to Georgetown University in your office. I said, okay, forget that. I'm going to nursing school.
So I did. When I graduated from college, I'll two years before I graduated, I had become engaged to a young man who I got school with. And following graduation, we married, moved back to our hometown. And I worked in a small county hospital where they desperately needed nurses.
I never felt that nudged. I was like, okay, you said you were going to be a missionary. Here we go. And everybody in school knew that I had made that commitment.
And I was going to be a missionary in Africa. So when I did, in our senior year, we did prophecies for each of the students. And they said, you know, it was going to Africa as a missionary. Well, that didn't happen.
And I never felt the nudged to go forward and say, okay, it's time the Lord's calling me. I need to get on with this. That didn't happen. But I did develop the attitude or the...
I learned that the mission field was right at my back door. And in fact, by that time, Africa was actually sending missionaries to the United States. So I really accepted my work at the local hospital as a mission project, kind of since. Well, before I knew it, I was facing my 40th birthday.
Time has a way of flying. By that time I had two sons. Both of them were in high school. It was a week of Thanksgiving.
And on Monday night, we had a United Methodist Women meeting. At that meeting, one of the things we were talking about, okay, United Methodist Women's Sunday is in January. Who do we want to invite to be the speaker for that service? But I guess you might say, all of a sudden, I kind of zoned out.
And I was mesmerized by a figure that stood in front of me. Yeah, you remember the poster of Uncle Sam? He said, I want you? Well, there was this figure in flowing robes.
Now, there was an okay, no face. Just this figure in flowing robes and the finger pointed at me. He said, I want you to preach. Is that finger pointed at me or somebody else?
Everybody else think I'm oblivious. So, okay, my immediate response was surely you just. Now, a little history there. I had never been able to give a testimony without absolutely being in a puddle of tears.
And you want me to preach? The next day I called a pastor who had been a mentor to me, a spiritual mentor. And I said, have you got some time this afternoon? I could come and talk to you.
Sure, about two o'clock. So, I left work early that day and I went to his office. We visited probably for about half an hour. But I couldn't bring myself to tell him what I had actually experienced.
And, you know, we were just talking. And suddenly he set up in his chair and had one of his fancy office chairs come. He set up, planted his feet firmly on the floor and looked at me and said, Judy, has the Lord called you to preach? I didn't want to hear that.
But I accepted him as confirmation of my call. I went home that evening and being thanksgiving the boys were camped because it was a special singer camp during Thanksgiving break. So, it was just my husband and I. And as we were eating supper, I told him what I had experienced.
And I looked at him and I said, are you sure this calling for you? He said, my phone didn't ring. Now that would come back to haunt him. But my phone didn't ring.
He said, if the Lord wants you to preach, you've got to follow your heart. You've got to do what you're called to do. A little bit about my husband, our relationship there too. And my, you noticed as I sang a song this morning, my voice got a little bit wobbling purchase?
I was doing gospel concerts. And I was singing one song after the other. But I felt like something was lacking. I, you know, needed something to kind of tie things together.
But if I tried to say anything, then I couldn't sing. So they didn't, why don't you sing if you can't do something kind of tie these songs together? So he did. And he delighted and telling folks as we started out, you know, if Judy talks, she can't sing.
If I sing, everybody cries. So I taught them she sings. And we enjoyed for several years, we enjoyed traveling and doing these gospel concerts. Love it.
Love it. So now here we were in the Lord's eyes. I want you to preach. Now also my husband was a district light leader at the time.
He taught the lay speaking classes. So it's natural. He's the one that needs to be preaching. Not me.
My phone didn't ring. Yeah, I will tell you that a few years later his phone did ring. And he also became a local pastor and did a great job. So it's been a journey.
My husband encouraged me every step of the way. Now I dreaded go in home and tell in the family that I've been called preach. Number one, his family was strongly Southern Baptist. His grandfather, his father, several uncles were all Southern Baptist preachers.
You know, what are they going to say about this woman thinking she's going to preach? His father embraced me. He was thrilled to death. Couldn't wait to introduce me to other Baptist ministers in the community.
And I actually had one of the Baptist ministers told me he said, I can't tell you how many times I've wished there was a woman that I would be comfortable sending other women to for counseling, Christian counseling. That Southern Baptist family embraced this woman as a minister. And when I went home to tell my own parents, my dad cried tears. He says, but we trained you to be a nurse.
And I know what he was thinking was you can't make a living as a pastor. But you can as a nurse. We trained you to be a nurse. Yeah, he did come around and it reached a point that I can remember a time or two in the hospital and I would be there and nurse coming to do something.
He said, this is my daughter. She's preaching. He did accept it and he affirmed it. It was proud of me.
But that was a hard pill for him to swallow. And just for your information, that United Methodist Women's Sunday that we were planning for. I ended up being the speaker and that was the time that I announced to my congregation that I had been called in the ministry. So that kind of started my process.
Now, there's all happened when the United Methodist Church was becoming much stricter about admitting the clergy and screening them and preparing them and whatnot. So there he'd been a time when if you said you were called to preach, they put you in a book basically pretty quickly. But now you had to spend a year like going through a process working with a mentor who would help you to reflect on your call and what is it going to mean and what's it going to look like and go through the board of ministry and have a psychological evaluation and hope it took a full year at least. But my manager said, why don't you say if they won't make an exception?
You know, talk to them, say if they won't make an exception. I know just in the last year I know I've ever seen him put somebody straight into pulpit. I asked him, knew my request was denied, can't do that. Well, in late December, it's a pretty cold.
And I had gotten off work and I was stuck to the gas station to buy gas. And since it was so cold, I had only full length coat. It was lined with a lining that was kind of loose at the bottom. But when I went to get out of the car, my heel caught in the heel of that lining and I flocked on the ground.
And basically what I heard in my heart was, in my time, don't rush, wait a minute, be patient, in my time. And I looked back and back. I spent 20 years as a layperson before I felt called to preach. I know he needed that time to prepare me a little bit.
Brother Ted, for these who graduate from high school, go to college, go to seminary and start preaching in a church, taking the administrative work of a church, without having life experience under the bill, I have to admire these young folks. I couldn't have done that. So I know I needed that 20 years as a lucky person to prepare to be in ministry. So, yeah, in God's time.
Now I was going into the ministry as a part-time local minister, which basically meant I didn't have a seminary degree, but I would be required to take some of the classes. I would continue to work my full-time job and pastor the churches as I pointed. I received my call from the district superintendent on Mother's Day weekend, deserved two churches that were located about eight miles apart, and they were about 15 miles from where I lived. And his statement was, Judy, these churches need a lot of healing.
Match my background. Judy, these churches need a lot of healing. And I served that appointment for seven years. Three as a part-time local pastor, but I eventually let go of that day job and full-time in the ministry.
And it's interesting that my next two appointments, when I was called and asked to go to another church, churches as it would be, both of them, different districts of attendance. They both said the very same thing the first one did. Judy, these churches need a lot of healing. Well, that began my ministry.
So what about this girl? I couldn't give a testimony. I couldn't give a crying. Well, for the first year in the pulpit, I cried every Sunday.
I had a hard time making it through that sermon, every Sunday. Now, I've gotten better, but it's still not uncommon for me to be brought to tears. The very idea that so great a God could love me could choose me. Said, that's it.
Still not unusual for me to tear up as you see today. I don't know where you might be on your spiritual journey, but I do know that whatever call God is placed on your heart, it's not going to look the same as mine. I fully believe that God comes to each one of us in a way that he knows we can receive it. However that might be.
Somebody asking you this question, have you ever considered preaching? Have you ever really good at teaching? Sunday's good. Affirmations that come from friends that affirm the work you may be doing as a late person.
God needs good, late people, just as much as he needs pastors. And in fact, when you accept Christ as Lord and you go through those baptismal covenants, vows, you become a minister in the church. We are all ministers, though we may not all be clergy. So there's work for each one of us to do.
Our greatest challenge is getting beyond those things that would hinder us from being, all that wouldn't be for him. Most of us have things that are allowed that we really don't want to let go of. This is going to be over simplistic. But things that could keep us from going deeper into our fight, serving as fully as we can.
For example, oh no, I can't do that. I can't choose your students. I can't visit shut-ins. I can't go down to the children's search food.
I can't attend Bible study or prayer meeting. Because that's our movie night. We've got a movie set night. Oh no, that's the day I go get my many pity.
I don't want to give that up. Or maybe you mean, I don't know. I go fishing. I work all week and I need Saturday and Sunday.
That's my rest time. These are the things I do at that time. But we all have to continue, like, salmon our lives, to determine those things or those places that we have not completely surrendered to him. You know, the song that I sang at the beginning.
Lord, help me be all that you want me to be. I don't know if you're hard. I don't know your journey. I don't know what things may be hindering you.
But I want you to invite you to go through a little exercise with you this morning as we end. I want you to hold on to whatever those things might be. Hold them close. Not gonna let go.
Come on. Come on. Everybody. All right.
No more struggling. No more trying over-wearing over foolish things. Just the calm and the sweet assurance that my life is in your hands. Facing now in one direction, leaving all that I've loved behind.
Making every moment a sweet, complete surrender. And gradually let it go. Sweet, sweet, surrender. Sweet, surrender.
Sweet, surrender. Sweet, surrender. To love with you. Whatever he has called you to.
He's not gonna kick you out there and say you're on your own. Whatever he has called you to, he will be there. You'll be walking on your side. As long as you continue to walk with him.
Thanks, sweet, God. Amen.