So I've been on a pastoral search committee for a little over a month now, and I'm working on a redesign for the church's website that I need to have in my portfolio ASAP so that I can get other work. I'm on the church's finance committee too, and next year's budget will be due soon. Ministry is getting busier across the board. Last week, during the circumstances where our pastor stepped down, I was in meetings or on the phone with people every day of the week trying to mediate. The pastor's job has fallen on the elders and deacons until we have another pastor (interim or permanent). We should all be busier. And I'm busier in ministry than I have ever been.
Meanwhile, my business is slow. This week I'm really starting to pound the market for leads, but I'm making less than a dollar an hour most weeks (over more than 40 hours per week!) and I still have real bills. I've lost money every week for over 6 months now. The car insurance bill just came. One of the hardest parts is having to study a whole new profession while I do all of this. My savings are starting to take a hit, both for funding the business and paying bills.
But I'll stick to my original commitment of giving the business at least a year to succeed before I think about being an employee again. There's practically nothing worse for me in ministry than to have a heart for missions but a job that ties me down to living in this state and sitting behind a desk 50+ weeks out of the year or that forces me into a state with an even higher cost of living while doing the same. Why limit myself to only 2 weeks a year of living with a purpose?
This raises another question. After all of those meetings going on at church, I was taking a walk around town while listening to a sermon by Tim Keller from Romans 12:1-8. I think it was called "Everyone with a Gift". He gave a very interesting illustration from Dr. John Gerstner. I'll paraphrase it here.
An American woman in the 1930s was saved at a Christian conference at the age of 15 or 16. Unlike many people who profess faith in such circumstances, she made a commitment to Christ and stuck to it. She wanted to take her hands off her life and give everything to God as a lifetime missionary. So she decided she would go to Bible college and eventually go into full-time missions in Asia.
At this time, single women were not going to Asia to be missionaries. It was not safe for them to travel there without a husband. The missions boards told her that she needed cross-cultural training and she needed to be married before they would send her. Near the end of high school, this young woman prayed:
"Lord, I take my hands off my life. I give you everything. I don't care about a comfortable life. I don't care about a safe life. I'm going to give You my whole life. ... I'm going to do all the training I need. There is only one thing I need from You: I just need a husband."
She went through Bible college, knowing that it would not prepare her for many other careers, and graduated without a husband, no boyfriend, no prospects. Then she went to a missionary training school, like a grad school.
On the last night of grad school, she still had no husband, no boyfriend, and no prospects. She said she sat in her dorm room "an angry young woman", wrestling and struggling with God.
That night, she realized that she had been kidding herself. Pastor Keller said,
"She was not miserable because she had taken her hands off her life. She was miserable because she never had. ... She had this idea of a noble, heroic life. And she was telling God, 'That's the life You've got to give me. ... And here's how You've got to get it for me.' And she was doing basically everything she could so that she could put God in her debt so He'd have to do it. And she realized, '... I was using God. I wasn't serving God! I was telling [Him] what He had to do!'"
Dr. Gerstner closed his sermon with this:
"If that girl, who spent a third of her life being ready for missionary service, saying goodbye to everything, to fun, to safety, to comfort - to everything - and thought she had taken her hands off her life, and that night realized she never had done it... do you think you have, then? I doubt it."
Pastor Keller's conclusion was this:
"She was saying, 'I'll obey if.' Whatever's on the other side of the 'if' is the real thing you are sacrificing for. And it's not God."
So what does God want me to do about work, life, ministry, missions, ...? Only He can answer that question - because I call Him "Lord". If He thinks this treating new career as tentmaking and going overseas for the gospel will give Him the most glory, He will do it.
But I have a lot more peace now than I did a year ago when I was taking large paychecks every other week to exhaust myself in a line of work that I had never prayed about going into.
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"... who shall I fear if my Anchor is secure? Learning to consider it pure joy when I'm facing tribulations,
Praising God instead of complaining or getting overtaken with bitterness.
Looking at the pages of the book of James and seeing the ways that God works through the trials to make us more mature in our faith.
It reminds me how desperate I am in this desert land,
thirsty for Your mercy and plan while You give me the strength to stand.
You're my greatest pleasure, yeah, no matter the weather I face, Lord you never forsake.
My fragile life is safe under Your sovereign grace. ...
"At some point every human looks right in the eyes of agony and through the tragedy asks himself, 'how can this happen to me?'
You might be the type with enough insight to hold on for your dear life
but slip because your grip is not as tight as I might like. ...
When faced with adversity your truth constantly reminds me that you command the seas with ease and with words you're turning wind to breeze.
It helps me to understand that we stand on solid rock not on sinking sand.
Through the providence of pain, You perfect Your plan.
Predestined to be tested when the works and the Words of God cooperate and educate men in the great gift of Grace and Faith.
And even though it's obvious, when my outlook's ominous
You've bound my heart and my conscience and gave me a constant calmness.
So when the pain comes like rain from the parts of life that maintains its strain
I can put my trust in the hands that sustain.
It's profound that with all these sinking ships around me,
He surrounds me and He anchors me with His grace abounding.
"Anchor of my soul, You sustain. You sustain.
When I'm in the storm, You remain. You remain -Good to me, good to me."
- Beautiful Eulogy feat. Josh Garrels, "Anchor".
Thanks YouTube for the lyrics.
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"Only when you lose her do you learn to appreciate her. Like even when I'm with her, I'm itching to get rid of her. And she only gives you one shot. Blow it, and she's gone.
"I took advantage of her. That's why I'm telling you this: you can't rush her - or slow her down. You better keep her by your side, she will slip through your fingers like sand. Her name is TIME.
"She told me a secret: that multitasking is a myth; you're not doing anything good, just everything awful. She begged me to stop stretching her thin, and stuffing her full, and stop being so concerned with the old her and future her, but love her NOW!
"Her presence is God's present. And you should be that: present."
- Propaganda, "Be Present".
