Saturday, September 29, 2007

HOW TO SERVE AN IMMEASUREABLE GOD AND HIS BORDERLESS KINGDOM....AND SURVIVE

We are far too little. God is way too big. There is an enormous amount of work to do. If we make ten phone calls per day, we could have made 12. If we visit two hospitals, we could have made it to three. If we counsel four families, we could have met with just one more. Ministry is in demand. How do we, being infantisimal by comparison, hold up under the rigorous needs of our world and keep from dying of depressionistic frustration ourselves?

We trust God.

That's it. We believe God is working in the body of Christ and we are merely one cell in His very large body called the church. I am not an island. I am a cell. So it is with you. Alone you or I are making no dents. But we don't work alone. I am linked to the zabillion-celled body of Christ. It is effective while I sleep at night. I don't have to win the world. I can't. It is God who operates this vast conglomeration of a system because He placed His Son as the head.

We trust God.

That's it. We don't have to coerce or manipulate people or situations. We trust God to do the work. We don't retreat to laziness or indifference because there is much work to be done. But, we believe God is working even when we don't understand the size of the project or the parameters of the expectation. Possibility is in His court when blindness blurs our estimative potential.

We trust God.

As a result, we hold up quite well. We are not negatively overwhelmed. We are positively overwhelmed. At the moment I have more major things going on in my ministry than ever...than ever! I like being overwhelmed. I read it as signal I'm in over my head, but not over God's. I trust Him. That's it.

3 comments:

Emily M. said...

Terry
I don’t like to admit to thinking deeply very often. But, I wonder if sometimes drowning in the overwhelmingness of it all isn’t just exactly what we need to do sometimes. At least for me it gives me a perspective and reminds me just how important and unimportant my part is in the whole thing.


Did you like me new word it has a lot of letters in it ;)

Anonymous said...

Thanks Terry. I needed that.

Stoned-Campbell Disciple said...

Such truth. Hard to live.