Living the Resurrection Reality – Part 6 – Ministry

“For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

~Ephesians 2:10 (NRSV).

The above verse is a culminating one. We’ve been “created in Christ Jesus,” which is something too easily passed over. The Father has raised us with Jesus (verse 6) — that was God’s work.

As a response, then, now comes our opportunity to work for the Kingdom.

We’re saved, indeed resurrected, for a purpose. We’ve heard it so often. We’re saved to serve. Ministry is this service. But we’re confused by the terminology. What is “ministry”?

The Lord’s Directive as Discerned by Us

Ministry is work for God, most often, that we love to do. We easily feel the Lord drawing us to it.

Living this resurrection reality is about taking the high esteem that God has for us and using it to broaden the manifestation of his love. God wants everyone to know this love. Ministry is anything advancing love. It’s not self-serving; it’s self-denying (once we’ve established our roots of identity in the Lord).

Living the resurrection reality is about doing the things we love to love others.

Love is action-oriented as ministry is action-oriented.

It’s not doing remote mission work if we don’t love the thought of it. Grace abounds to give us this choice. There are others who’d do this remote work, but would loath the very things we love to do.

God offers the bounds — we comply with the desire to be called into one or a few flavours of the million to choose from. The Lord designed us for certain loves and duties around those loves.

Asking the Question

God’s desire is to keep transactions simple and clear. We too easily make things complicated beyond necessity.

We ask, “Lord Jesus, what do you want me to do... this minute... this day... this year... with my life?”

When we earnestly seek the revelation of God, through such prayer, we quickly and eventually get the blessing of clear hearing; direction from the Lord is manifest in the unlikeliest of ways.

This search for calling is now doubling as a seeking for the knowledge of God’s momentary and long term will — and all between.

In all this seeking God we’re lifted with Jesus into the courts of heaven — we are blessed in this work. The face of God-on-high shines on us.

This, with the prior realities of the resurrection also in tow, is meeting instantaneously the will of God.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.