Ezekiel 44:16, “They shall
enter My sanctuary; they shall come near to My table to minister to Me and keep
My charge.”
The other day I encountered a
homeless guy in the parking lot of an Exxon station. He had a sign that said “Just
trying to survive.” He also had a shopping cart, and was digging through the
garbage pulling out aluminum cans. Moved with compassion I cleaned the change
out of my car, and gave him all the money I had.
I said, “Hey Survivor, Jesus
love you.”
He said, “Don’t pray for me,
pray for my buddy sick in that patch of woods down the street. I’ve been to 3
stores looking for him some Alka Seltser extreme cold…”
After some more chit chat I
drove away. My mind wandered to wishing I had money enough to keep sleeping
bags, cots, and coats in my truck. I thought how cool would it me to be able to
go to the store, buy a charcoal grill, and go cook those guys a hot meal. All
thoughts… no action.
But later that night the
encounter directed my dreams. I dreamt that I was talking to God. Well… not
talking, but more bitching. I complained that He called me to be a minister,
and yet my only ministry is really a blog… or so I thought. I asked Him, “who
have you sent me too? Is it the homeless?” I blabbed on about how my vocation
as a loan officer looks nothing like the vocation of a minister…” I asked for
the thousandth time, “Why the financial struggle, isn’t there a ministry “profession”
out there for me that has sufficient resources?”
It was then the Father asked
me, “Who did I call you to minister to?”
I answered, “I have no idea,
all I know is that You said, ‘Where I have called you to there will be no
support.’” (Which I have always believed it would be an indigent group not
capable of supporting a minister.)
God replied quite emphatically,
“I have called you to minister to ME!”
I do not expect a soul to
understand the fullness of this statement, but I could kick myself for having
gone 48 years without even considering it. Yes when I gave that homeless man
some money I was as the world would call it, “ministering to him.” But the reality
is I was responding to the Holy Spirit, and therefore truly ministering to Him.
To put it another way, the Christ in me was reaching out for the Christ in him.
I keep looking for a job, a
vocation, a profession as a minister to some people group; but God in one
statement wiped that thought process from my mind. Ministry to God is not any
of those things. Ministry to God happens anywhere, it is happening now as His
presence fills my spirit, and my soul cries out Glory to God. It happens with
the homeless man, not because I have met some temporary need, but because God has
held him his entire life through the most hostile of circumstances and that
that homeless man would still have compassion for his fellow man. Do you see
the difference? Do you see the beauty that I see?
I get with new clarity what
Christ meant when He spoke in John 5:19, “… the Son can do nothing of Himself,
unless it is something He sees the Father doing…” Christ did not come to
minister to us, Christ came to minister to the Father. John 8:28 offers the
same insight when Jesus said, “… I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak
these things as the Father taught Me.” Or his references to only doing the
Father’s will… because He came to minister to God, not to us. We fix, we do, we
plan, we organize when “we are ministering to men.”
We love when “we are
ministering to God.”
Let this relieve the pressure
to spiritually perform for others. Let this give proper priority to your plans
to fix a person or segment of society. Minister to ME, God says. Let that be
the focus of our soul.
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