It was a spring day in September 2004, and funnily enough, I was on a course for safety auditors, which is the kind of course that is steeped in detecting compliance within management practices. There is almost nothing in it that connects to the deep spirituality of being called by God, by name, by designation, by vocation, by the words placed on my soul that very day.
‘I’m calling you
out of all of this,’ said God the Holy Spirit, even as
I recognised that I was no longer fit for working in this world. Don’t worry, I
was very good at it. But competence doesn’t always correlate with passion. In a
stimulating career full of promise and a great salary, I felt as if I were
dying. Enter the process of training.
God had said that day
that He would breathe life into me
in the area within which
He had brought me to life.
that He would breathe life into me
in the area within which
He had brought me to life.
Having fallen in love with the Lord, He was calling me into an
area of work connected with that love.
In God’s mercy He recognised that, in allowing me to be broken
by the circumstances of a grief that turned my life upside down in so many ways,
it was His Presence, agency, and healing that meant I could do little else.
There is something humbling, and indeed very scary, in knowing
that you can only do one thing; that one thing meant anything other than directly
serving God quickly became thoroughly irrelevant. I became a Levite in a short
period of time.
It’s scary, because if you can’t do
the only thing you can do,
where does that leave you?
the only thing you can do,
where does that leave you?
For a brief time in 2016 I faced this prospect. I know I got
greyer in this period of my life; the worst year ever. It was for my good,
however, to be placed in such a hotbed for growth as God temporarily
reconfigured my vocational goals.
It’s one thing to say you are more than what you do, but this
does not account for a calling on your life that God gives, and only from the perspective of two years on can I
say that the torment-of-identity that came had less to do with insecurity
(though I did learn a lot about my insecurity during this time) and more to do
with the identity God had placed in my heart in the first place.
I do not resent the fact that I had to suffer not only time out
of ministry but also a period of complete character challenge and overhaul. It
actually did me no harm (apart from the grey hairs). I do see the value in
having my identity stripped away, because it showed me just how faithful God
was to steady my spirit at the time, and to hold me aloft throughout the
journey, and I was able to see this all the way through.
But as I look back over the 15 years,
to ask the question, ‘Was it worth it?’
is the wrong question to ask.
to ask the question, ‘Was it worth it?’
is the wrong question to ask.
That sort of question only serves to take my thinking in the
wrong direction. When it comes to serving God, it’s not about whether it’s
worth it or not, and yet I have asked that question countless times. Every time
I ran off the road into a ditch. A better question I’ve found, knowing that God
has called me, and that He will finish the work in me if I keep going, is to
ask God, ‘Lord, will you continue to
teach me, and move within me for others, and keep showing me I’m in your will (or
not) as I serve?’
Many times, so many, I’ve contemplated what it would be like to
be burned-out, to experience disgrace, or to die suddenly; for the ministry to
finish abruptly. Besides the pain any of this would cause, such a reality doesn’t
scare me as much as it once did, even if the call on my life hasn’t changed one
iota. I know that God can be served from any place and situation. But I would
also say I’m more likely to serve these days ‘in fear and trembling’
(Philippians 2:12).
I don’t know about other pastors, and I can only surmise it is
the same for most of us, but being a Pastor is not a job but a way of life. It
would be rare that I make myself unavailable. Having learned the practice of
protecting accessibility in my secular management career, a practice I became
very good at, God’s call completely reverses such a practice, because that’s servanthood.
Many modern day professional pastors may draw neat lines around their service,
and it is wise to do so, but truly serving God means many times being available
for people when we would prefer not to be. Of course, it quickly blurs into the
unreasonable, and when family suffer the cost, I have learned more and more
there is more to discern, including my hidden drives and motives. But there are
countless times, almost daily, when I’ve said ‘yes’ to Jesus in serving someone
when I would have preferred not to, and have known His blessing; His blessed
Presence there with me, ‘in’ the moment of service.
I know there are many careers that require the same level of
devotion, but serving God adds a nebulous degree of complexity, in that if we
really don’t enjoy what we are doing, what do we do? Argue with God? I haven’t
won too many of those. For me, being a pastor can feel more like a cross to
bear than anything else I’ve done.
I do have this comfort though: I know that in not being able to
do anything else, I am called of God, and whether it is worth it or not has
come to be irrelevant.
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