I don't know where I get half the sayings I have come to quote. The next couple of them are prime examples. Someone somewhere gave me advice about my future mate... "when you can't imagine life without her" it's time to get serious. I've heard others talk about potential knee surgery... "When the pain is keeping you up at night..." it's time for the scalpel. But one I know much better than those two has to do with professional ministry. It goes something like this... "If you can be happy doing anything else..." don't.
I cannot express just how many times I have fantasized about doing something other than professional ministry. Almost anything has seemed like a nobler, more regular profession at times. And the difference maker for me has always been that "thumb in my back" that I have always known to be the nudge of God on my life. They say you are either called or you aren't. I am. It is inescapable. Okay, the notion of being called is inescapable. Running as far and as fast from that call, knowing I am in out and out rebellion against God is possible... but it is no real option.
But I am a minister of the Gospel. It is who I am. I cannot deny it. Even if I find myself fitting whatsits onto whosits in some factory for the rest of my life there will be a fire in my belly and a thumb in my back reminding me of who I am.
So this sick, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach right now will some day be overcome by a sense of doing what I was born to do once again. I just don't know why I am in this valley in the first place. I don't know what to do with myself half the time. My undiagnosed A.D.D. is in overdrive even when I have a ministry position of some sort. Waiting for the next door or window to open up for me? Focus is remembering to blog every day just to stay sane. Life feels as though it is teetering on the edge of meaninglessness at this moment. I am swaying back and forth between dogged determination to perservere and driving my dear wife up the wall with my depression. I am just not doing a very good job keeping a smiley face on things. I do not want to be fake, but I do want to be godly in how I deal with this adversity. Only God Himself can help me to pull that off. I am trusting Him to do so.
I was interviewing a pastor my senior year for a paper I had to do for senior english. Knowing I had expressed a call to ministry he also gave me that sage advice about, "if you can see yourself doing anything else..." I've done many different things since that day. I have a long resume' for sure. As much as I have enjoyed all of them to some extend and love what I do now with LAUNCH, yes there is that thumb in my back to take it a step further. Currently I do that by being a minister right where I am as often as I can. As for the future I find myself in that same place of "What's next?"
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