A Call to Action

I was invited the last week in
January to teach a couple of seminars for a missions conference at Bethel
College (Indiana). My seminar was titled “Out of the Bubble and
into the World.” In this seminar, I
stressed the importance of getting out there and doing ministry now. This is something that has been churning
inside of me for quite some time. I get
so frustrated when people feel like God has called them to ministry, whether it
is missions, pastoral, or youth ministry, or whatever and they are not actively
serving in any kind of ministry. When I
approach them about this, I usually get one of two responses. The first is usually something like; well I
have to be established first, or I do not have time right now, or I am planning
on it five years from now. The second
thing that I hear is usually something like; I have some junk in my life that I
have to get straightened out first, I am struggling with this or that, but as
soon as I get that taken care of then I will get involved. These are all lies and excuses or “B.S.” as I
like to put it.

If God is indeed
calling you to ministry then the time is now it is not somewhere down the
road. I like to give this example to
support it. For example, say that you
want to learn to play the guitar; what steps would you take to learn it. You would first pick up the guitar and become
familiar with it and then you would probably start taking some lessons and
spending time practicing. Most likely,
you are not going to go take lesson and then wait ten years to purchase a
guitar and then try to practice everything you can remember from your lessons
ten years ago. Yet, it is this same
approach, which many people have towards ministry.

Does any of this
sound familiar to you? If I could just
get my finances straightened out, loans paid down, get married, get this sin
out of my life, be closer to the Lord, or whatever other excuses people have
for not being involved in ministry. I am
here to tell you; that if this is where you are at right now, then now is the time
for you to act. You do not need to clean
yourself up to come to God and be used by him.
The Lord takes pride in using you right where you are at. More than anything else, he desires your
obedience to him. He desires to use you
in spite of yourself. If I had waited
until I got all of the junk out of my life, I would not be in ministry. Do not let anything keep you from being
obedient to Christ. I am $66,000 deep in
college loan debt and I am currently raising support to return to Kenya
and have dedicated my life to fulltime missionary work. There are times when I have no idea how I
will make ends meet but some how the money comes and God has always provided
for me it may not always be in the time frame that I desire, but I am always
taken care of.

Therefore, my
challenge to you today is take a step forward in your obedience to the Lord and
get involved right now, right where you are.
I am not going to promise you that it will be easy, but it will be worth
it.