Matthew 9:32-38 ~ You Cannot Volunteer for the Lord’s Work

Excerpt:

In the church in Antioch, the Holy Spirit told the church, "Separate for me Barnabas and Paul for the work of service as missionaries."

From that, people are taking off and saying,  "We need to be more missionary minded.  We need to start training people to be missionaries.  We need to start sending them out like the early church did."

Well the early church did not do that.  The Holy Spirit said to separate out a couple of guys.  You see, the Lord called them and the Lord sent them out.  They did not volunteer.  The church did not train them.  The church laid hands on them and sent them on their way because of the Holy Spirit.  But that is how people twist the Scriptures to put more pressure on people to get busy in church work.  When in reality, it is not what the Scripture says at all.  It says we are to pray.  Pray that God would send people.  People cannot volunteer.  People cannot do it with their own human effort even if they wanted to.  It must be the Spirit of God.