Expanding on My Ministry

So after writing my last blog about my ministry, Jason Powers asked the following questions to provoke deeper thought on my part;
With the idea of "calling" in the area of your chosen ministry...
1. What does it mean?
2. How do we know?
3. And what implications does it have?

In my chosen ministry, whether it be youth, worship, missions, etc, I believe that God puts something in me calling me to serve in that area of ministry. This calling may be different at different times in your life, but I do believe that it is something put in you by God, with the purpose of directing you to the place He wants you to serve.
I believe the way we hear this calling is by praying, listening for God's voice, taking advice from Godly council, recognizing gifts He has put in us, and analyzing the fruit we see from our service in that ministry we are called to. I do not believe that God will call you to do something you are not good at, and if He does, He will equip you to do it and you will become "good at it". I think that if we are called to something we will feel a passion for that area of service and we will see good fruit in our work with that ministry. I know for myself, God has put a passion in me to see youth come to know Him. I know that this is the ministry He has called me to, for the time being, because I have seen good fruit from my work with youth. I know that if this was not where He was calling me, I would not be seeing good fruit in my work, because all good fruit comes from Him.
I do believe that when we are called by God to something, we had better listen! God is not some teacher who THINKS He knows best for us and just puts us somewhere He THINKS will work. God KNOWS what is best for us and He puts us where He KNOWS we need to be. He is all knowing and all powerful and yet we sometimes doubt His calling...To quote from the movie Hot Rod, "Where do we get off?!". I think sometimes we have this vision of God of an old man playing a harp and just making suggestions as we go along in life. That is not the God we serve. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He has a perfect plan for our lives and He wants to use us. It is up to us to hand over the reigns and let Him.