We’ve been
here now for about a year and a half. We’ve
enjoyed this time of settling in, meeting people, and finding a church. Now my thoughts turn to ministry. What am I supposed to be doing now, to serve
the Lord and build His kingdom?
When we
first arrived at our church I tried out a few things I had done in past
churches – helping in VBS, teaching Sunday school, working in women’s
ministry. Each was an opportunity to
fill a need for a season, but for a variety of reasons, I am no longer
involved in any of them.
For the last
seven weeks I have been on a journey of prayer and Bible study to draw closer
to the Lord and seek His will for my life.
In the past, whenever I’ve been involved in some aspect of ministry, the
work itself keeps me so preoccupied that at times I end up neglecting my
relationship with the Lord Himself – my source of power, wisdom and strength
for the ministry! If you’ve even done
this, then you know how easily it happens.
So, for the first time in a long time, I’m doing nothing but enjoying
the fellowship of the Lord and waiting. And
it has been sweet.
Jim is gone
for some hours two days a week and I’ve been jealously guarding that time alone
with the Lord. I’ve been trying not to
only talk with Him about my longing for His will. Instead, I spend that time worshiping Him
for who HE is, thanking Him for the obvious ways in which He is working in and
around me, and then I pray for my church, my family, my neighbors, our country,
and anything else the Lord brings to my mind.
If the Lord has nothing else for me to tangibly DO, EVER, then these
times with Him will be enough. On the
other hand, I do hope that there are adventures yet ahead, beyond all I could
ask or even imagine, that the Lord still has for us to tackle together.
With that in
mind, I have been working my way through Henry Blackaby’s study, “Experiencing
God”. His premise is that the Lord is,
and always has been, at work around us and that He gives us the privilege of
joining Him in that work, but we often miss it.
Why? Because we’re so busy going
about our OWN plans for serving God that we don’t wait for Him to reveal what
He’s ALREADY doing around us so that we can join Him!
I have engaged
in a lot of ministry over the many years since the Lord called me into
relationship with Himself. I confess, I think
a lot of that ministry was self-initiated.
I got an idea, thought, this is a great idea, I think I’ll do it! I never sought God’s direction first, I just
asked Him to bless what I had planned to do all along. It wasn’t unsuccessful, or fruitless, but it also
wasn’t necessarily what God was up to around me.
A decade ago
now, I had just resigned from Bible Study Fellowship International and found
myself, for the first time in many years, clueless about what I was “supposed”
to do next. As I looked around in my church, I didn’t see any ministry
opportunities on the horizon, but we were in the process of looking for a
pastor, so the Holy Spirit inspired me to begin praying about that. That’s what I did for close to a year, until
we had finally identified a pastor to whom we wanted to issue a call. It was
during that time that I first read Blackaby’s book, “Experiencing God”, and was
beginning to look at ministry differently, not just thinking of filling needs,
but waiting for the Lord to show me what He was up to, so I could do that.
From that
point on, as I continued to pray for God’s “what next”, He began to come to me
with ministry opportunities. I was
approached to teach 3rd and 4th grade Sunday school. I had been praying, so I knew this was not
just a need, but God’s opportunity to serve Him where He was at work. What came out of that was a wonderful
experience team teaching with a woman who became a sweet friend, and foundational
spiritual relationships with kids I would encounter later in other ministries.
In a
Wednesday night prayer meeting, it was announced that a female chaperone was
needed for the senior high missions trip to New Orleans to help with rebuilding
after Hurricane Katrina. I had never
done anything like this before. I knew
it would require working in the heat and humidity (it was early August),
working with teens, dormitory living in an abandoned school, long hours, and
demanding physical labor. BUT, it was as
if the Lord spoke to me and said, “Dot, this is for you!”, and I went. As a result, I had the privilege again of spiritually
investing in the lives of senior high students.
What a huge blessing!
The biggest
and most profound invitation from the Lord to join Him in what He was doing was
to donate a kidney to a woman from our church.
Through that there were opportunities to talk with psychiatrists,
doctors and surgeons, TV reporters, and our church family about the wonderful
grace of God in clearly leading us, and then going before Jennifer and me as we
took each step together. The morning of
the surgery we could not contain the joy of what lay ahead of us! Only heaven will reveal the impact this work
of the Lords had on those to whom we witnessed during those days.
This week I found
myself in chapter 7 of Blackaby’s study.
Chapter 7 is all about the cost of following God when He invites us into
the ministry in which He is currently engaged around us. I know about that. Each time the Lord made an opportunity to
serve Him available there was a cost.
I knew
teaching Sunday school required time and preparation I couldn’t use for other
things. I knew kids could be talkative
and occasionally disinterested and I would have to deal with that. I knew that the missions trip would stretch
me, in relating to teens, working hard (at 61 years!) in high heat and humidity
and less than ideal conditions. I knew
that donating a kidney might garner some opposition from my family (which it
did), would result in some pain and a few weeks of recovery, possibly even
complications (which never happened!). I
went in knowing, at least to some degree, what to expect.
At the end
of the 3rd day of this 7th week of the study, Blackaby makes
a statement, and follows it with a question that makes me uncomfortable. The statement was:
“Lord, whatever you ask
of me today, or in the future, my answer is yes!”
His question
was this:
How will you respond to
God when He calls you to a sacrificial commitment?
Will you respond, Yes,
Lord, OR No, that costs too much?
In the past,
I was okay when the Lord gave His invitation to join Him in the work He was
doing because I knew in advance something of what it would cost me BEFORE I
said yes. What Blackaby, and the Lord,
were asking of me now was to say YES in
advance of knowing what the assignment might be, regardless of the cost.
In my heart,
I want to be able to affirm Blackaby’s “whatever
you ask of me today, or in the future” statement, and give a resounding,
confident, YES to the Lord! But I know
already that the only way, ever, that I can do that is by God’s grace. I’m not adventurous enough, or courageous
enough, or faithful enough to say YES unless, Lord, you lavish me with your
grace! I can though, and I do say, yes
Lord, I trust that when I get to wherever You want me to go, do whatever You
want me to do, You will enable me to follow through, without hesitation and
with abounding joy.
I don’t know
exactly where this journey will take me.
I can’t SEE a thing on the horizon, but that’s part of the wonderful
adventure of following the Lord, walking by faith in what I cannot (yet)
see.
I do know
this, whatever He has in mind will be beyond my wildest expectations and all I will
need to follow Him is the confidence of His leading and the grace He always
gives in abundance.
I have 6
more weeks of Blackaby’s study ahead.
Can’t wait to see what the Lord is up to! More later. . . . .
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