Dear Friends,
People
often say to me, “I wish I knew what God wanted me to do with my life.”
“That’s
easy,” I reply. “Ministry.”
Their
eyes open wide. “You mean give up my job
and go away to a nunnery or something?”
“No,” I
reply, “probably not. Just get going. Look around you. The mission field is between
your own two feet at any one time.”
Ministry
is not something for the professional Christian only—someone who has been to
seminary or Bible school or on the mission field. It is for all who have become new persons in
Christ Jesus and have experienced “the old things passing away, and all things
becoming new” (see 2 Cor. 5:17). It is
for those who have had a radical change in their lives because of their
conversion and who want—more than that feel—a
responsibility to make sure everyone has the same opportunity.
Ministry
is being a blessing. It’s serving and giving and not counting the cost. It’s
what we who love Jesus are supposed to be doing all day, every day. Ministry is
talking about Jesus, serving Jesus, being Jesus where people are in need of
Jesus. Ministry is the most exciting, stretching thing in the world. It’s an
art—a spiritual art.
Ministry—helping
people—happens all day every day and all night every night. Ministry goes on
all over the world and on all seven continents. Old people and young people
minister. Black people and white people. Wealthy people and poor people. Sick
people and healthy people. Ministry is a
full-time twenty-four hour thing. An “I can’t wait to get going in the morning”
thing. An “I don’t have time to sleep” thing. An “I can’t believe I have the
privilege of doing this” thing. It’s a hard thing, a glorious thing, a stretch,
a reach, a “pulling you in every direction” thing. It is exhausting and exhilarating, an emptying
of yourself and a “filling up to overflowing” thing. Ministry is in the end an
art of the Spirit—a spiritual art that is for all of us—those of us who have
grown up in the church and those of us who, like me, have come to Christ from
the outside of “Christian everything.”
So don’t say, “But I don’t have any opportunity to minister. I have no training.” Ask God to show you the
hundreds of opportunities that are right under your nose every day.
Blessings,
Jill Briscoe
Executive Editor
Just Between Us Magazine
Amen! Thank you so much of the reminder!m
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