You Are Not Your Ministry.

One of the things I've wrestled with for as long as I can remember is an answer to the question, who am I?

I just caught the title of an article on churchleaders.com called "You Are Not Your Ministry." That single five word sentence is like the theme of 2011, and my first full year in ministry.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

I know some things about you:

I know that you are not your art.
I know that you are not your church.
You are not your technical expertise, or lack thereof.
You are not your voice, even though people love it when you’re on stage.
You are not what your authority figures believe about you.
You are not your blog posts, or your readers’ insane responses.
You are not your Twitter count, or your Facebook friend total.
You are not your impact.
You are not your successes, and you are not your failures.
You are not that thing in your life that didn’t work out.
You are not that thing in your life that worked perfectly.

But I also know this about you:

I know that in Christ, you are a child of God.

My friends, there will come a day when you no longer create art. There will come a day when the software you use is no longer in existence. There will come a day when you no longer serve in that church, in that ministry. There will come a day when he’s no longer your boss, and they’re no longer your Elder Board. There will come a day when you quit blogging, and when people put Twitter and eight-track tapes in the same category. There will even come a day when your impact wains.

But there will never, ever come a day when you stop being a child of God.

Read the full article here.

Perceptions.

A few weeks ago I watched the movie Marley and Me. I was busy doing something else, and had the movie on in the background, when all of a sudden my ears perked up.

John, the main character, was talking to his boss about the column he wrote for the local paper. He said, "I just always had this idea in my head about being a reporter (instead of a columnist)."

His boss Arnie replied, "sometimes life comes up with a better idea."

Throughout the movie, we watch John as John watches his friend Sebastian progress as a reporter and move forward in his career, while John stays put. It's obviously tough for John to watch, but he is a very successful columnist.

I identify with John, and I think all of us probably do at some point in our lives. We have a perception about something that we want to attain. Do we really want it? Or do we think we want it? And why do we want it, because it will provide us with more power or fame? Or is it a sincere desire that we have, with proper motives? It's hard to know sometimes what we really want.

How we perceive ourselves can be tricky. We may be something entirely different than we think we are. When we look in the mirror, what do we see? Is it what we really are? Do others see us in the same light?

You can’t seem to see past your own reflection
Caught up in the halls of your introspection
And you’re staring at your mirror on the wall
Asking “who is the fairest of them all?”
‘Cause Lord I know, it’s not me
If only you could see that you’ve already been set free

Well you say “hold on, if I could just try this one thing.
Well I know I can change and that would change everything”
But a house made of mirrors never helped you see any clearer
It’s yourself you can’t see past
And Lord, isn’t that just like me?
If only we could see, that He’s already set us free

Well come on, come on
Let’s throw our mirrors down
Yeah come on, come on
Let’s shatter the glass on the ground

-Tenth Avenue North//House of Mirrors

Seeking Status.

Growing up, I wanted to be a high-powered executive, working long hours in a big city office, making a ton of money and bossing people around. And I pictured myself doing all of this while wearing heels.

My reasoning for this was simple; I wanted to be seen as having status in life. I wanted to be seen as important, and the way I thought I'd get that was to make a lot of money, have a lot of power.

When I got to college at the University of South Dakota, I realized I was starting out with 0 status in life. I was from a tiny town in Minnesota that no one had ever heard of. Anything I did in high school didn't really matter; this was a clean slate.

In a way, being in a new town in a new state at a new college excited me. I realized I could construct whatever image I wanted to. I could start all over and be whoever I wanted, whether it was really true or not.

My very first week of class I met an interesting group of people. As we continued to hang out, I realized they were different than anybody I'd ever met before, for a few reasons. One of them was their interest in hanging out with me and my roommate. We spent quite a bit of time with a couple girls several years older than us. I was amazed that these cool seniors would want to hang out with lowly freshman. After a week or so, I realized that it wasn't just me that they seemed interested in; they seemed to have a love and compassion for other people, even strangers they didn't really know. I'd never really seen that before.

It wasn't long before I found out why they had this real love for people, even people who were hard to love. They had experienced the love of God is such a meaningful way in their lives that they couldn't help but love other people because of it. They talked about God like he was their buddy who lived down the hall in the dorm; like they actually knew him. And I'm not talking about the way Pastors talk about God, like he's "sovereign and almighty" and all that stuff. They talked about God teaching and showing them things in tangible ways.

Even though part of me thought it was kind of weird, I was amazed that they were so assured of their status in God's eyes. Even when they didn't feel like God cared about them, they chose to believe him despite their doubts and trust the truth over their feelings.

I wanted this assurance for myself. I wanted to know God like they knew him. One day, a friend of mine came to my dorm room to talk about all of this stuff. We read some verses together and talking about God's love, my sin, and Jesus' death on the cross. She shared with me one of the most quoted verses in the Bible, John 3:16 -- For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. She said, "For God so loved AMY that he gave his son for her, so she may have eternal life by believing in Him."

I'd heard this verse a million times, but suddenly I actually understood it. God gave his son for ME? He must love me a ton, to give up his son for me. I realized that this made me important in God's eyes. I didn't have to pursue a powerful status in life, because God thought I was already significant.

As I pondered these things after my friend left, I realized a few things:

- I wasn't sure I'd go to heaven when I died.
- If I asked Jesus into my life, I'd be sure.
- This was a really significant decision.

- I should not have let me friend leave without telling her all of this.

So, I asked Jesus into my life. I prayed a simple prayer, confessing my sin and acknowledging the fact that I couldn't save myself, but I needed Jesus to save me. I asked God to make me into the person he wanted me to be- a significant person in his eyes, and that I wouldn't care about how I looked in the eyes of other people.

So, I prayed this prayer, and nothing really changed right away. Little by little, as I began to learn more about God through the Bible and talk about him with others, I realized why he saw me significant: because he had created me to be like him ("in his image," as it says in Genesis). He wanted me to be his ambassador in the world, and share my love for him with others around me. That God would trust me with this task, the most important thing in the world, and the purpose of our lives, showed me that God thought I was significant.

Now more than 6 years later, my life continues to revolve around this significant task: sharing my love for God with others around me in any way I can. My relationship with him is the most significant one I'll ever have, and affects everything I do in life. And when my time here on earth is done, the fun really begins: life in Heaven with Jesus.

pick up.

I am intrigued by people's unique individual qualities. I enjoy learning about their passions and talents. Lately I've been thinking a lot about my strengths and how to use them to best glorify God. I think knowing them and how to use them effectively is super important. Someday down the road I'd maybe like to help others figure this out for themselves. I like that it's strategic (a strong thought pattern of mine) because harnessing your potential will increase your effectiveness and efficiency.

I feel like I've been on the fast track to a mature walk w/the Lord. The last five years have been a wild ride, but I think it has been good all around. I've always been surrounded by people who were more mature, some very much so, which helped me grow immensely.

For the first few years of my walk with the Lord, I ate everything up. My faith became very real and personal to me. In hearing many sermons and reading many books, I focused mainly heard the "should nots"- things I should not do, should not say, should not think. But somewhere along the way there was a disconnect with what I SHOULD do, say, think. If people were telling me, I was not listening.

In his book The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Clairborne writes about this feeling. "There must be more to Christianity, more than just laying your life and sins at the foot of the cross. I came to realize that preachers were telling me to lay my life at the foot of the cross and weren't giving me anything to pick up. A lot of us (his youth group/friends) were hearing 'don't drink, don't smoke, don't sleep around' and naturally started asking, 'okay well that was pretty much my life, so what do I do now?' Where were the do's? And nobody seemed to have much to offer us."

Do you ever feel this way? I think all of us probably at some point in some way. A college grad might lay his future down at the foot of the cross. But what does he do while he waits for God's direction? My relation to this is my identity. I'm at a loss. I know that I should not find my identity in what I do. My resume, my planner and my list of goals in life do not define me, but it's ingrained in me in many ways. And even when I can figure out how to lay it down, I don't really know what to pick up.