Sheltered Environments, Calling, and Being a Minister of the Gospel

I learned something this summer. I was interning at a church in Texas, and interviewing for a position there as an assistant pastor. We ended up coming to a mutual agreement that it wasn't the best thing for me to have the position. But God told me over the course of the summer that the summer wasn't really about the position at all.

It was about me.

Now before you accuse me of being self-centered, let me explain. I've been at Bible College the last five years of my life and I not only enjoyed it, I'm quite proud of it. Originally, I went to Bible College because I believed God wanted me, was calling me, to be in the ministry. By that, I suppose I thought of traditional vocational ministry. Pastor or youth pastor, Bible teacher, missionary. (I've never wanted to be an overseas, foreign language learning missionary, but it's in that same category as the others.) I had a shift while I was at college, to where I became more flexible with what I might do, whether my "ministry" was vocational or not, in a church or "secular" workplace, or whatever else.

What I didn't realize for a long time was that I had believed a very subtle deception about my identity and worth to God, because of my "ministry call" and my Bible College experience. I believed that God would be more pleased with me if I was in "ministry," that it was a higher calling, that I would be selling myself short to not fit the ministry mold. Well, God really nailed me on that this summer.

God doesn't want ministry out of me. He wants obedience. He wants me to be true to who He has created me to be, that I would be completely and totally me, this child of God named Luke, every day of my life.

This was a radical shift in my perspective. My direction, my focus, has changed. No longer am I going to try to be something else, something that I'm not, or fill a role that I don't fit in. I have one desire in this, and that's to follow God, and be me while doing it. I'm not burnt out on ministry, and I'm certainly not tired of people or church. But I'm taking a break from vocational ministry, and finding out who I am. I'm fully intersecting with the world, perhaps for the first time in my twenty-three and a half years on earth, basically all of which I've spent in a sheltered Christian environment of some kind, except for some very brief periods. It's not time for me to work in a church...it's time for me to learn how to relate to people, and make my faith relevant to the world I live in.

I do believe I'm called to ministry, but I don't really think it matters whether that's vocational, for a church, for a Christian organization, or something else entirely. What matters is that I'm obedient, and true to God's calling on my life. Calling doesn't have to do with vocation as much as it has to do with identity. Assignment and gifts have to do with vocation. Everyone is called to ministry. Look in Acts, where the disciples called a meeting to choose who was going to wait on tables (ch. 6:1-7). See their requirements for the job: Full of the Spirit and wisdom. Then the disciples prayed and laid their hands on them to release them to do this work. Obviously they thought this job was just as important as any other.

If you follow Jesus, it's in your spiritual DNA to be a minister of the gospel. That's what being a Christian really means. Jesus didn't give his disciples the chance to opt out of ministry and settle for a "normal" life. Don't base your identity in titles and vocations and tasks. Find it in the Jesus that you follow, and the God who created you, and then you'll be free to really live.

Postscript: Let me add that there is a vocation/gifting that the Bible says carries a higher standard with it: Those who teach will be judged more strictly than others (James 3:1). I believe that's because teachers will answer to God for whether they guided people to the truth or led them astray. (If you can think of any other "higher callings" in the Bible, post a comment and let me know.)

Water Bottles, Habits, and Thirsting After God

A friend of mine recently made a spiritual observation and used one of my personal habits to illustrate it. I thought it was interesting, so I'm going to elaborate on it.

You see, in the last couple years of my life I've had a Nalgene water bottle that I keep with me almost all the time. I try not to let it get empty; when it gets three-quarters or more empty, I'll put more water in it. After all, an empty water bottle is really no use at all. What's more, whenever I get thirsty I want my water bottle to be close at hand, with water in it. This is my way to ensure the greatest likelihood of actually following through, meeting my need and desire for water. This also ensures that with water available, I'm less inclined to attempt to satisfy my thirst with more appealing but less fulfilling alternatives. I frequently refuse soda and coffee, even when others encourage me to drink them.

Even better, I don't just drink water when I'm thirsty -- I drink it all the time, because it's good for me and because it's always accessible. In short, it's a habit. I'm not sure how much water I drink per day on average, and it doesn't really matter. I may drink about one full water bottle (just over one liter) in a day, or perhaps two or three. But I don't have a quota or minimum amount, because physical need varies and I don't want to be motivated by a rule. It is a better policy to simply know that I must heed my body's thirst. And the first prerequisite for meeting a need is the availability of whatever is needed. If what is needed is more available, then I won't need much motivation to meet that need. (This is evidenced by the effect a plethora of conveniences available to us in our everyday lives has on our decision-making process.) Having a water bottle and drinking water is a part of my life now. I can't imagine doing without it. Even on the rare occasions when I don't have it with me, I go to find a drink and rue that I left it behind.

If you're still reading, you're probably seeing the comparison between this and our spiritual need. Jesus says to the Samaritan woman whom he asked for a drink, "Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:14). And David says, "O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you , my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1).

The question for us is not whether we have a need for God -- rather it is whether we recognize the need and what we are doing to fill it. Do we just go to God when the circumstances of our lives dictate that we need Him? Do we make a practice of "filling up" on God once a week or once a day, pretending that it's enough while maintaining our mundane and lethargic spiritual lives? Do we fill up on other things that are not as pure and necessary, more appealing and less fulfilling, the sodas and the coffees of the world and of the religious institutions that tantalize in taste but ultimately blind us to what we really need?

Or do we make God so available, and knowing Him so readily attainable that we get lots of Him without even realizing it, that we reach for Him when we don't feel like we need Him, that we make time with Him a habit rather than something we have to constantly remind ourselves to do?

To put it succinctly, do you have a water bottle, and how close is it to you right now?