How do you know if God is calling you to CYCW?

How do you know God is calling you to child and youth care work?  Is it really a divine call.? Or could it be something else in YOU ?  How do you tell the difference?

" This isn't a Sunday School Picnic. Don't think that you are going to spend your time playing with children"

Ernie Nightingale was a pioneer in South African child and youth care. I went to him to tell him that I had a calling and that I needed to know what child and youth care really was all about.

" I cant tell you whats its like ," he said.  "You have to experience it to know....SO you HAVE TO TEST YOUR CALLING . If you get this wrong, you will be very gravely hurt."

Ernie didn't right away employ people who came to interview with this explanation for their wanting to do this work. He sent them home with a list of things they must do to test their calling first. He gave me a copy of his especially prepared document which set out the tests.

Based on Ernie's list and my own as an employer, these are some discernment exercises that may help:

1. Pray.. You don't  have to keep on asking the question (am I being called to child care?).  Most important is to LISTEN. Spend half an hour a day in quiet time listening. Preferably before you go to 2..

2. Read the scriptures ... not haphazardly, follow a reading programme of some sort . Do not do this thing of opening the Bible randomly and pointing at a verse. Although it does help from time to time to allow, through prayer, that you be led to a reading. This should support what you learn of the possibility of a calling and not substitute for the reading programme. When following the programme LISTEN as you read. If you are being called, your reading will start to shape into a message that may communicate your call and the conditions it should or will fill. Sometimes the message "comes out at you" from the reading... speaks to you louder and is no longer simply embedded in the print. You will know when this happens.

3. Journal......... write down your experiences and feelings that come to you during your prayer and reading times. Record what you think is being said to you. You will go over and over this later to help get a clearer discernment.

4. Go out and get some experience.. best to volunteer in a program. It is really the only way to experience what really happens and the impact that child and youth care work has on you as a person.

5.Accept "no" as an answer. However, usually you are directed toward some other call .

6. If after a fair period of discernment you still believe that you are called.....abandon yourself to His will.

7. There is scriptural evidence to say that if it is His will, it will work for you. If it is not, it will fail... do not be afraid. But don't use that as the only measure . The hurt is too big a risk to take just to test your calling and it does harm to the organisation and the children..