Jason Boyle’s Calling to the Lord’s Work
Spring 2024
I first felt the call of God upon my life for ministry, and specifically for missionary work, when I was very young. My parents were unsaved, and so had no understanding of the need of a Christian education for their son, but in the Lord’s providence He arranged to close the door to the private school where my parents had enrolled me for kindergarten, but opened the door for a Christian school in the neighborhood instead. Some people at that school invited my parents to send me to the Vacation Bible School next week being held at the church connected to the school so that I could “meet new friends” from my kindergarten class. My parents agreed, and that week in VBS I not only met friends, but I also met the Lord. I was very young, but I believe the Lord saved me after hearing the very simple gospel message for the first time.
Soon afterwards, by His grace the Lord saved my parents, and we attended that Independent Baptist church for some years. There, the Lord used my Sunday School teacher to show me the need on the mission field. She had gone on a missions trip to Mexico during the summer to help in the VBS of a church, and when she came back she showed us slides, pictures, and souvenirs from Mexico. She emphasized to us the need of children in Mexico to hear the gospel and be saved. At that moment, the Lord placed a burden on my heart for missionary work and specifically for Mexico. From that point on, my desire was to be a missionary in Mexico. That desire remained as I grew up, and has always been the basis of the way the Lord has led me since I was seven years old.
Because the Lord saved me at young age, and because of the type of teaching I grew up in, I struggled with security of my salvation until coming into the Free Presbyterian church in my early twenties. While I never struggled with a sense of my call to the mission field, I felt the need to seek the Lord earnestly to confirm my call, particularly in my junior year of high school, when I was preparing to submit my college application. I did not want to begin to make big decisions about my life, such as a university choice without complete confidence in the Lord’s call upon my life.
The Christian school I was attending gave us about fifteen minutes at the beginning of the school day for our private devotions, and so I decided to seek the Lord in His Word over the next months to give me confirmation of my call to the ministry, and specifically to Mexico. The Lord answered my prayer, and led me to Matthew 4:16, “The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.” While we minister to people in darkness and bring the light of the gospel in all places,, the Lord used that verse to confirm what He was calling me to do in Mexico: to bring the light of salvation and the gospel of Jesus Christ to men and women still sitting in great darkness. Later on the Lord gave me more confirmation in reading Paul’s testimony in Acts 26:18, where he recounts what the risen Christ said to him when He saved him and what He was calling him to do in his ministry: “To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.”
Those two verses, specifically Matthew 4:16, gave me confidence as I went to university, and afterwards to seminary, about what the Lord would have me to do. I have never looked back. I studied Christian missions at Bob Jones University, and went on a mission team to Mexico in the summer of 2000, which was my first time visiting the country the Lord had called me to. I interned with a missionary family in Mexico City in the summer of 2002, where the Lord gave me specific direction as to where in Mexico I would be serving Him. I was able to spend time in Mexico City and other parts of Mexico over the next few years, and after marrying Danielle, we came to Mexico City in July 2010 to begin serving the Lord here.
I feel very blessed to have known the call of God upon my life for ministry from such a young age, and to have had the specific burden not only for the mission field, but for Mexico. While that may not be the usual way God works in people’s hearts to call them to the ministry, it does remind us that we should be fervently praying for the children in our churches, and for our own children. Pray that the Lord will save them at a young age, and begin to work in their hearts, preparing them for future ministry, wherever that may be. We should never downplay what God can do in the hearts of children of any age, and we should be reminded of the great influence Sunday School teachers, and the local church in general, can be on our children. As parents, we need to be in constant prayer for our children, and encourage them in their thinking about the future, from as young an age as possible, and ask the Lord to mold them and prepare them for His service.
But even if the Lord does not call, or begin to burden the heart of someone, when they are still a child, that internal call of the Lord is still vital to any ministry work. That is true for pastors at home, and perhaps even more so for missionaries on the foreign field. When the Lord has called you to leave home and go minister in a different country, with a different culture and language, that can only be done in the Lord’s power and with an unshakeable confidence that the Lord has called you to that place to serve Him.
May the Lord continue to call men into the ministry, men and women to the mission field, and may He do a great work in our children, in the next generation of our churches, so our pulpits will be filled and missionaries sent out to the share the light of the good news of the gospel in many dark places.
Rev. Jason Boyle | Minister, Iglesia Cristiana El Redentor, Mexico City