Called to Conquer

Finding Your Assignment in the Kingdom of God

Derek Prince

• Publisher: Chosen Books
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN:
  9781441213273
• Print ISBN:
  9780800794958
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Beloved Bible teacher Derek Prince is known for his in-depth study of Scripture and for helping people live out biblical truths in their everyday lives. Now he helps believers everywhere discover something truly priceless: their personal assignment from God. With a thorough examination of Old and New Testament passages, Prince shows readers:

what a calling is
the specific gifts God gives
how to overcome obstacles to claiming their gifts
seven steps to finding their place in God's service
and much more

Full of timeless insights and wisdom to live by, Called to Conquer equips readers with the tools they need to find their calling, live with purpose and authority, overcome strongholds, and take their rightful place in God's army.

1

The Upward Call

Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. Then He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” They immediately left their nets and followed Him. Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James . . . and John . . . in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him.

Matthew 4:18–22

I find it interesting that the first four men Jesus called were fishermen. In some measure, I think I understand the wisdom of God in His choice. Fishermen are a breed apart. If you are reading this and you are a fisherman, you know that fishermen are fanatics.

Sometimes when I have gone for a walk, I have passed by men who are fishing. I notice that the fish are not biting. But then I think, That doesn’t matter – they’re fishermen. Circumstances never bother them. Discouragement never affects them. Adverse weather is not a problem for them. They have a vision for fish.

The Lord gave us a wonderful message when He began His ministry with fishermen: Christians should be like that. We should be so passionate about answering His call that nothing else matters.

Notice, too, that Jesus did not waste a lot of words in calling His disciples: “Follow Me.” This may be the shortest sermon on record! As we will discover, He did not – and does not – do a great deal of explaining. This shows us that there is no compromise in this commitment to Jesus. There is no middle ground.

Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

Matthew 16:24–25

Later in His ministry Jesus gave this same call to another man: “Follow Me.” The man hesitated. “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” Jesus replied, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the Kingdom of God” (see Luke 9:59–60). When Jesus says, “Now,” tomorrow is not good enough. He challenges us directly and lets us decide how we will answer Him.

I grew up in the Anglican Church in Britain, and I was a member for the first part of my life. They made it pretty easy to belong (as many churches do) by saying, “You don’t have to do much, but you do have to do just these few things.” I did all the things that I was supposed to do, but I never found reality in my life.

At the time, I did not know my own heart, but what I was looking for was a challenge. The first time I was confronted by the challenge of Jesus, I responded with total commitment. I suspect that many other people have not grown too excited by conventional religion. They are not fully satisfied, but they do not know what would satisfy them. I want to suggest that what they are looking for is the challenge of the unequivocal, uncompromising call of God. If you receive that call, do not let anything keep you back from the excitement of responding.

God’s call is holy and it is heavenly. It is an upward call. It is as if we move along a horizontal plane, and God’s vertical call comes from heaven and bisects our lives. Our lives before His call are quite different from what our lives become if we respond to that call.

You can save your life if you hold onto it. You can keep it for yourself, please yourself, make your own plans, do what you want to do, but you will lose your life. Or, you can lay it down – and you will find another. In His authority and sovereignty He says simply, “Follow Me.” That’s all.

Sovereignty is somewhat a theological word. I interpret it this way: God does what He wants when He wants the way He wants, and He asks no one’s permission. This idea of His sovereignty, which has been largely neglected in this present generation, is one of the great truths of Scripture. Until we appreciate and honor God’s sovereignty, we will be unable to understand His call on our lives. But if we are willing to go forward with that understanding, we will enter the new life – with all of its benefits. Here are just four aspects.

Do You Want to Enter “Forever”?

Our motivation in pursuing the new life is, at its simplest, the desire to do the will of God. That was the motivation of Jesus Himself. He said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work” (John 4:34).

In his first epistle, John speaks about the one who does the will of God. He contrasts that with everything this world has to offer. John clearly says, “The world is passing away, and the lust of it” (1 John 2:17). All the world’s desires and ambitions, everything it grasps for and strives after are all temporary. They are all going to pass away.

After this initial statement, however, is the word but: “But he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17). That is the difference. When you renounce your own will, when you say no to yourself and unite your will with God’s will, you meet the conditions.

In the last resort, God’s will is going to be done. If you become identified with His will, you become unsinkable, undefeatable. You are going to last forever. Isn’t that exciting? I invite you to make that proclamation in a little more personal manner, like this: “If I do the will of God, I will abide forever.”

That is the first mark of the new life. It is a life united to the will of God. It has in it all the strength, power and confidence of God’s own will.

Do You Want Perfect Guidance?

The new life is also one that is directed by the Holy Spirit. Let’s look at just one verse of Scripture: “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Romans 8:14).

This verse is all in the continuing present tense. Another way to phrase it is: As many as are regularly led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. When you receive Jesus as your personal Savior by faith, you are born of the Spirit of God. You become a tiny infant in God’s family. But to grow up into a mature son or daughter in His Kingdom, there is a further process: being led by the Spirit of God. Many Christians who have been born again have never learned to be led by the Spirit of God. But those who are regularly led by the Spirit of God become sons of God. They become mature. They grow up. They find God’s purpose and destiny in their lives. (We will learn more about being led by the Spirit of God in chapter 8, “The One Who Guides You.”)

Do You Want to Know That God Will Provide?

A third aspect of this new life is that the provision for it comes from God. Once you have surrendered yourself to God in obedience to His call, He accepts responsibility for you. I will illustrate this from my experience with the British army, though in many ways the British army is far from being a pattern of God.

I did not enlist in the army; I was conscripted. I entered the army in September 1940 and for the next five and a half years I never had to worry about what I wore, where I would go or what I would eat. My pay in those days (believe it or not) was two English shillings a day! It is hard to fathom how little that was. But we never starved. We did not have to pay for our food, buy our own clothes or secure a place to sleep. For about two years I slept in the North African desert, but at least there was some kind of covering provided for the night. It was no picnic, but the army accepted responsibility for every soldier.

When you commit yourself to God’s will without reservation, God becomes responsible to provide for you. There are many people who can testify to this. When I stepped out of the British army and became a full disciple of Jesus Christ, I married a woman who had a children’s home just north of Jerusalem. The same day that I married her, I became adoptive father to the eight girls in her home. That is a large family. We went through the war that marked the birth of the State of Israel. In fact, we were right in the middle of it: Our house was about a quarter of a mile from the frontline. After that, we moved from country to country and place to place. We faced dangers, difficulties, opposition – but through it all, God consistently provided for us.

Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” The way of the world is to go about and grab everything in sight. The world makes material possessions – food, clothing, money, houses, cars – its objective. But in this new life, if you make the will of God your objective, God will add these things. That saves a lot of worry if you know that God is the One doing the adding.

Some may say that sounds almost too good to be true. Please realize that it is the promise of Jesus Himself, and He never deceived anyone. There are thousands of servants of the Lord throughout the earth today who will testify from personal experience that it is true. It works. God is as good as His Word.

Let’s look at one more beautiful Scripture in the gospel of Mark. Characteristically, it is a brash comment by Peter that brings forth this answer from Jesus.

Peter began to say to Him, “See, we have left all and followed You.” So Jesus answered and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time – houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions – and in the age to come, eternal life.”

Mark 10:28–30

In this passage Jesus says, “In due course, whatever you have given up will be given back to you, multiplied many times over.” Not just in the next world, but in this world.

Do You Want to Find Your Tailor-Made Life?

The fourth aspect of the new life is this: If you accept without reservation the call of God on your life, He will see that you are offered the life that He has tailored just for you.

God has made you for a certain life. As we will see in chapter 3, “Seven Steps to Finding Your Place,” when you are saved, you are saved to a specific calling. What is more, you will be frustrated and unfulfilled until you enter into that calling. Certainly you can go through life without finding it and end up in heaven, but you will have missed the most important experiences on earth.

From 1940–1949, I was a fellow (member of the governing and teaching body) at King’s College, Cambridge. At the end of World War II, the college authorities wrote and offered me a professorship at the university. I wrote back and said, “I’ve become a Christian. I’m not coming.” I could have said it a lot better, but, anyhow, I turned down their offer because God had a different call on my life.

Now suppose I had accepted their offer. At age 65, I would have retired. I would have sat somewhere in a little cottage with a rather moderate pension. But here I am, well past that, traveling the world, strong, active, leading a life that is challenging and exciting.

This life is tailor-made for me. I would be a misfit anywhere else. But in order to find that life, first and foremost, I had to lose the other life. When God called me to the land of Israel and the Jewish people and then to the nations of the world, I actually can say I forsook everything. This was not done in a dramatic way; God just put me in a situation where to obey Him meant that I had to give up all else. I gave up my country, Britain, and settled in a foreign land. I gave up my birth family – not in the sense that I was alienated from them, but their claims came second to the claims of Jesus in my life.

But God is faithful. I would not want to trade my life with anybody – not with the royal family, not with any prime minister, not with anybody. It is the life God appointed for me.

Ponder Your Decision

Do you want to know the job, the place, the relationships, the ministry He has ordained for you? Do you want to enter that special place of provision, responsibility and privilege designed just for you – in this life and into eternity? Are you willing to answer His call?

The Spirit of God is very personal. He may be speaking to you right now, saying to you, Follow Me. Give your life to Me for My service. Ponder that for a few moments. Shut yourself in with the Lord. If God has something to say to you, be willing to hear it.

Those early fishermen, Andrew and Peter, were casting their nets into the sea when Jesus walked past and said, “Follow Me.” James and John were in the boat with their father when Jesus called them. Scripture records that immediately they all left their nets – their means of livelihood – and their family ties, and they followed Him.

You, too, can discover your calling. It is not complicated. In fact, as we will see, it is intensely practical. In this book you will learn to discern your “place” and your giftings. You will grow in the ability to hear the Holy Spirit’s voice. You will also discover the greatest obstacle to fulfilling your calling. As you align yourself with the particular calling God has for you, you will face your assignment in these last days with confidence and courage.

Jesus wants to bring you to a place of incredible responsibility and privilege as a king and priest within His Kingdom. (See 1 Peter 2:5, 9; Revelation 1:6.) The powers of hell are working to stop you. What will your decision be? Let’s learn what it means to know your calling.

2

What Exactly Is a Calling?

Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure.

2 Peter 1:10

The Scripture above grips me with a sense of its importance. I find that among Christians who know the Lord, very few seem to be making their callings sure. Multitudes of Christians do not even realize what their callings are. I trust I will be able to bring these basic truths of the calling of God home to you in such a way that you will be able to act on them.

The word call is the word used in most translations of the Bible. Two alternative words that express the same meaning would be invitation or summons. The point at which God confronts you with His call is the most significant moment in your life. Your whole destiny for time and eternity will be determined by the way you respond.

In my own experience – having grown up in the Church of England, and having been through its various rituals and ceremonies and requirements – I had reached the age of 24 without ever know- ing God personally. In fact, I did not know that it was possible to know God personally.

Then, while serving with the British army, I was suddenly confronted by the call of God through a meeting I attended. I had no doctrinal knowledge of salvation or the new birth or evangelical truth. I was a total stranger to it. But one thing I knew: God had made something available to me and I might never have another opportunity to respond. It was so vivid I knew I had to make a decision, and if I failed to do so, I had no right to expect that He would call twice.

It always grieves me when I see people trespassing on the grace of God – unable to m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Books by Derek Prince
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• 1. The Upward Call
• 2. What Exactly Is a Calling?
• 3. Seven Steps to Finding Your Place
• 4. Giftings
• 5. The Ministry Gifts
• 6. The Greatest Obstacle to Fulfilling Your Call
• 7. The Enemy in the Church
• 8. The One Who Guides You
• 9. Your “Self” Must Cooperate
• 10. The New Self
• 11. Completing Your Assignment
• 12. The Hope of Your Calling
• 13. A Kingdom of Priests
• Index
• About the Author
• Back Cover