John Bevere - You Have a Specific Calling
- Watch
- Donate
Last year, I was in Hawaii, and I was told, "Hey, there's a gentleman that really wants to have dinner with you." I said, "Who is he?" He said, "He's an instructor for the Navy SEALs." I replied, "Set the dinner." This man sat down with me; he's a Jewish man, an American Jew who was born again as a young man, and he wanted to serve God. So, he went to Bible school for two years. After Bible school, he started interning at a church, and he got accused of sleeping with a girl in the youth group. He said, "John, I didn't do it," and he continued, "But they basically threw me out. I lost everything—three years of work down the drain." He said, "You know, I loved God, but I really didn't seek God."
He mentioned that he began seeking God when he got thrown out and lost three years of his life. He said God spoke to him, saying, "I didn't call you to ministry; I called you to military." He said, "I went to the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, and then the Marines. Then I went to the Navy." The Navy recruiter was reading down all the things he could list for, and when he reached the word "SEALs," he exclaimed, "That's it! That's it!" He said, "Life just exploded in me." The recruiter said, "No, no, you don't want to enlist for that. Every one of us flunked out; 0.1% of the guys make it. You don't want to enlist for that." He replied, "No, no, that's what I'm supposed to do."
What neither the recruiter nor he knew was that he didn't know how to swim—true story. The other thing the recruiter didn't realize, which he didn't know either, was that he was born with narrow ear canals. He had to undergo several operations and have tubes put in his ears, and if he got any water in his ears, he was in excruciating pain. He said, "John, I couldn't go a foot below the surface without going into pain." He prayed every day that God would heal his ears, and he did. He taught himself to swim. He told me the miraculous way he got into the SEALs, and then he started telling me about the miracles that happened on his missions—miracles greater than any I've heard in any American church.
Miracles that made the hair on my arms stand up, like when his phone, which was turned off and had no pre-programmed numbers because that wasn't allowed, turned itself on during a raid in which they were ambushed and called his parents in the middle of their prayer meeting. He said, "John, I'm 50 years old. Suppose I've missed my calling." It's never too late. Smith Wigglesworth, one of the greatest evangelists of the 20th century, didn't start his ministry until he was in his 50s. He became one of the greatest men of God and was a plumber until he was in his 50s. There was a guy working for our ministry in our IT department; he didn't seem fulfilled and seemed out of place.
One day, I called him, and I said, "I'll buy you and your wife a one-way ticket to Kenya." He asked if he could go home and talk to his wife about it, and I said sure. He came back the next day and said, "We're gone. We sold everything." He was 55; she was 62. That was eight years ago. In those last eight years, they've set up 32 Bible schools using our resources, training pastors in the bush. I just met with him; he's grinning ear to ear. Eight years, he's been over there. He's had malaria 17 times, and he said, "John, I'm dying over there. That's where I belong. That's where I was created to be."
How do you know your calling? I've got a minute left. Okay, here's the deal: I spent a lot of time talking about it in here. Now, let me say this—don't get mad at me, because this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to share with you that you see, you've got to understand that when you write a book and write a message, it takes 400 hours. I can't now just go into another hour-long message, but I do talk about it extensively in there.