Over the last 8 years of pastoring Victory’s Crossing Church there have been many times I wanted to call it quits. I wanted to sing that classic by Johnny Paycheck – Take This Job and Shuv It. Some of my most frustrating battles…
Having to find a portable office at a Starbucks, Panera, or Caribou. Then once you’re finally settled another person sits beside you and turns on their computer and begins to play a video game with the volume turned up. You look at them and they smile back.
Going door to door to find new attendees is something I’ll hold my noes and do. I just hate it when someone in the next house over pulls up into their driveway and bolts for the door like they’re running from me.
Starting a worship service off when everyone that morning is running behind. You begin to sing, and all you can do is close your eyes and pray that someone shows up.
There are many, but one final one is the financial pressure that planting a church can have on a pastor’s family. Men are wired to provide and accomplish. On those Sundays when the offering is down, which can be often, you start the new week feeling like a dud.
Its during those times that I think of Job’s words in Job 30:26-27, “But when I hoped for good, evil came, and when I waited for light, darkness came. My inward parts are in turmoil and never still; days of affliction come to meet me.”
What to do? Here’s a core conviction I have. Opposition and hardship are often evidence that we are in the very center of God’s will. The trials, doubts, and hardships are the black, blue, and brown hues that God is using to paint his masterpiece on the canvas of our lives for His glory. He’s at work in it all, writing his miracle story through us. It’s this story that builds our faith, and gives us a message of hope for others who will also walk this same path.
Listen to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 16:8-9 – But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.
I love those first 4 words, “But I will stay…” Ephesus was not the easiest place to start a new ministry. He wanted to run to Corinth, but he made a resolution to stay. Why? There was a wide door for effective work. That word “work” really stands out. Like it or not ministry is work and will require blood, sweat, tears, struggle, and determination, but the work is worth the struggle. As we work God works through us.
Notice that along with the work there are many adversaries. Adversity will be present in the call. The greater the call the greater the adversity, but the greater the Lord will work through us if we will not quit.
What are we to do? Paul’s advice…”Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” (1 Corinthians 16:13-14 ESV)
One practical piece of advice… Learn to enjoy the journey. Rest in the knowledge that God is at work writing His story. If you can’t learn to enjoy the present, you’ll not enjoy the future that He has around the corner.
Don’t quit your job, ministry, marriage, family, or calling. You are doing a great work!
How can I know God exists?
Dallas Willard in his new book, Knowing Christ Today, has an amazing chapter, chapter 4, on this very question. He points out that there was a beginning to the physical universe.
That’s a ground breaking scientific discovery. Once there was nothing and then there was something. They call it “The Big Bang.” Cosmologist looking into our universe can tell that it is still expanding from that cosmic boom long ago. Galaxies are moving farther apart and space itself is growing.
There is a physical law that says every physical event has a physical cause. It just makes sense. Events don’t just happen. You just don’t fall over. Someone pushes you. Dents don’t appear on your car. Someone hits you in the parking lot. Coffee cups full of coffee, sugar, and half and half don’t appear, someone brings it to you. TV’s don’t appear, they get purchased and brought home from Best Buy. Behind every physical event there is a cause.
Picture for a moment a huge row of dominoes falling in front of you. As you look down to the left you loose sight of the fallen dominoes as they pass over a horizon. Do you think the dominoes started to fall on their own? No. You would know that somewhere there was a first domino that started the string of events, and behind that domino a cause, a force that was other than a domino – a finger, an earthquake, a rush of wind.
What caused the boom, the bang that scattered light and heat and all the elements for our universe, all the laws to govern it, creating time as we know it?
Forget about evolution for a moment. Evolution is about life, organisms, people. That’s another topic. This was before evolution. How did matter, rocks, dirt, star dust, planets inorganic matter come to be? Science has told us there was a beginning.
It didn’t spontaneously happen. There had to be a cause, a cause outside the physical / material because there was nothing physical around. The best answer is a being without the limitations of time and space, a personal being with amazing power and freedom.
Col. 1:16-17 – For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.