Essential non-Essentials

I want us to look at our lives and ministry.

This because we can be so swallowed by the externals that we forget the basics of our ministry.

And I have made that apparently conflicting title intentionally.

As I am gradually getting into fitting on the Biblical elder role, I many times have to deal with handling many a question and resolve many a dilemma.

Interestingly, probably the most recurrent has to do with a call to ministry.

The surprising thing is that even before many would come up with the clarity of the call, they will be thinking and sourcing for the equipment they will require for the ministry they are not very clear about at that point.

Allow me to give an example

Someone is sensing a call to start a church.

He will come asking for prayer for clarity. Then with the same breath will ask for prayer and assistance to procure musical instruments and a sound system.

Yet it might be in a place without electricity.

But even worse, since it will be a new church, there are essentially no people to play those instruments or crowds to need that public address.

Why does a need for equipment come before the clarity of the call?

That is where my title comes from.

What will happen when you get the equipment before clarifying the call? Suppose God shows you a different ministry?

You will be compelled to pursue that call on your own. That call must be there whatever else God says.

You see, you cannot disappoint the people who gave towards the procurement of that equipment.

Isn’t that what is called putting the cart before the horse?

Allow me to give an oblique example from the scriptures

In Jeremiah 42 we have some people coming to the prophet for clarity concerning the direction they were to take due to the crisis they were in.

The prophet prayed and of course received guidance from on high. He simply gave the message as he had received it.

In chapter 43, we have the ones who had sought that clarity accusing Jeremiah of corruption because the prophecy did not go the way they had anticipated.

You wonder why they had asked for prayer in the first place.

The truth is that they had already decided on what they would do and needed God’s rubber stamp to feel spiritual.

It is like the people who will approach an oracle concerning leaving employment for ministry because they already know that they would be retrenched or sacked instead of asking what they would need to do because they will soon be out of a job.

Or the couple who are seeking to know God’s will concerning marriage when they are already living together or have already set up everything for their wedding.

What do you want God to say or do?

God’s will is primary. It should be the highest pursuit of our lives and experience.

We do not seek His will with a plan B in our minds. It is His will or nothing.

Probably you sense that God is issuing one order or the other to you.

Wouldn’t the best thing to establish without doubt whether that is what He is ordering you first before laying the groundwork for something you are not sure off.

Or do you think that the same God who issued the order is unable to help you in that groundwork?