I believe that I am called to full-time ministry, that I am called to be the hands and feet of Jesus. I think where I am called, and how I will serve, will look different in each stage of my life. There is a passion and a desire within me to be with those who are shoved to the fringes of life, the outcasts of society and those commonly overlooked. I know I feel this desire because I once was a person who had been bulldozed over by life, who found adoption to sonship through Christ, and I know that God gave me that life and those experiences so that I would be able to continue that blessing and share that good news, as once someone shared with me.
I once heard that we minister sometimes most powerfully to others through using our deep hurts. I have found that true, I believe its easier, I can make eye contact through the severe pain of hurts and wicked situations because I get it, I have been there, I may not have experienced everything the same but the shock we receive from those who don’t get the hurt we experience individually it is replaced with understanding and welcoming arms to find rest with those who have our same experience.
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I currently work for a ministry that serves abused women and their children. My job is to work in the safe houses directly with the women who are being served, and I can safely say that both the shelter, and the women it serves, have changed my entire life.
In one of the safe houses there is a big, round, wooden table that everyone sits around to eat, but also to chat, to paint our nails, to cry. At this table, I have formed relationships with the women living in the house, and have heard some of the best news, and some of the worst. I love this table, and I find it to be extremely Biblical. In one of my Bible classes we were taught that eating with people in Biblical times was very meaningful; to sit and eat with someone was to say to that person, "I believe you have value." We may not say that outright these days, but this sentiment is felt as we sit around this big wooden table topped with food, looking around at those who are fighting the good fight with us. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). Without a way to say it any more eloquently, I value the word of God. I believe that the Bible is the inherent word of God that He gave to us. I believe that it has power and that it has the power to change hearts and to open minds. I believe it speaks to all things and to all people. I value the study of it for greater knowledge, as well as the devotion to it for deep change.
I believe that I am called to ministry, this is abundantly clear to me. Like all things in life though, my calling has never been just black and white, or very simple. I say that because I believe that I am actually called to much more than just ministry, I think we all are. Let me explain:
When I was in high school I ended up going on a missions trip by accident. At this point in my life I was in an abusive relationship, I lived on a mountain of lies and was a shell of the person I once was, a slave to circumstance and sin. From the time that I got into a minivan at the church in the Bay Area to the time that I got out of the minivan in Mexico, where we were staying and would be working, my eyes had been pried open to the things I had never wanted to see. I knew I needed God and I simply couldn’t unknow it. I felt like a square peg returning to a round hole of a life, I had no idea how I was going to fit. |
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