Section 01 - Ministry vs. Calling

What exactly is ministry? I am sure this word produces a different picture in the mind of each person. Ministry can be understood by comparing the natural world and your natural life with your spiritual life.

Your Spiritual Career

In your natural life you would look for a career, or the main thing that you will do with your life. Ministry is the equivalent thing in your spiritual life. If you like, it is your spiritual career.

You need to know how to fulfill your spiritual career. But unfortunately many people make it too complicated. Most actually never find their ministry or carry it out. They just do not know how to go about it.

In our natural life it is very easy to understand. You know what is involved.

You find out what you want to be when you grow up. You build up in your mind, desires of the kind of career you want to follow.

When you finish school, you go to college to learn and develop the knowledge that you need. You qualify to eventually take the position and fulfill the career that you desired to follow.

Because ministry is so similar, we tend to take the same approach in preparing ourselves for ministry as we do in pursuing our careers. And although they may look very similar, they are unfortunately not the same thing. So you cannot approach them both in the same way.

As we go through the first part of this teaching, I would like to show you how to identify and understand the difference between a career and a ministry, and how you should be carrying out your ministry.

The term 'ministry' is not quite what everybody thinks it is. If you think of ministry as a spiritual career, usually the last thing that you have in your mind is what the word ministry actually means in the original language of the Bible.

Becoming a Servant

A minister is not someone in an exalted position of authority that is highly qualified and exercises domination over people.

A minister in Bible terms is quite simply a servant. This is quite the opposite picture. Ministry effectively means 'service'!

Perhaps in a career this is also true. You rise up in life but your purpose is to serve humanity and to make your mark in this world; to do something perhaps that will change the lives of others.

But we don't usually have this idea in mind with a career, do we? When it comes to a career we often think,

"I want to rise up and make more money than anyone else. I want to become famous and well known, and I want to come to a position of authority where I can control other people."

Those three temptations have been there from the beginning. They were there in the Garden when Satan came to tempt Eve. And Satan tried to bring the same temptations to Jesus.

The temptations are a desire for fortune, fame and control. These are very dangerous when we mix them with ministry.

What needs to be added to this is another two important things that we need in life. These also color our approach to ministry and get mixed up with our motives for doing ministry.

Acceptance

The first one is acceptance, which is simply having other people take you just as you are. They do not reject you, but accept you just the way you are. They are ready to be associated with you and receive you into their group.

You are then no longer the odd one out and you are treated the same as everyone else. This is the essence of acceptance, but it also goes much deeper than that.

Most of us have grown up facing rejection in life. You may have been rejected for many different reasons, including where you come from, your racial group, your looks, your height or weight, or even your gender.

There are many things that could have caused others to reject you, and these leave you feeling unaccepted.

But acceptance begins even deeper than that. It starts way back in your relationship with the first parent you get to know - your mother.

A mother is actively involved in fulfilling the need in a child to be accepted. If there is anyone in the world who accepts a child, no matter how ugly or naughty it is, it is the mother.

The mother is always there to love and care for the child. So the mother gives the very first acceptance for a child.

Each of us goes through different experiences. Some of us were not fully accepted by our mothers. Some mothers were too busy working or doing other things. Perhaps there were also other children around.

No matter what the situation was, you may have felt that your mother did not give you the acceptance and you went out into the world alone. You may also have had other siblings and family members that did not accept you and you did not fit in with them.

There are so many things in life that can produce it. It's a big void inside us, and so we continue to feel that people will not accept us.

As this becomes mixed up with your career, it creates a driving force inside you that will always be controlled by other people. That is because everything you do will be designed to get other people to accept you.

You are then caught in circumstances that stop you from being fully efficient, because you are always worried about what people will think. You have to keep adjusting your behavior for other people.

If you take this now into the realm of ministry, the same principles apply. Ministry is something that you are doing for the Lord. It means taking your place in the spiritual life according to what God sees in you.

The Scriptures teach that when we accept Jesus as our Savior and are born again, we become members of the Body of Christ.

If you consider yourself as a part in a body, you would be fitting in with a lot of other parts. So hands, feet, ears, eyes and nose all recognize one another and need one another.

They all fit in with each other. So if you are not feeling accepted and cannot fit in with the rest of the body, you cannot easily accept the place you were put in. You might think,

''I am just a big ugly nose."

You don't want to be the nose because it is ugly, and people don't like big ugly noses. So your ministry is now affected by your view of yourself and that deep need for acceptance.

Recognition

The second thing that stands in the way is similar to acceptance but not the same. It is recognition.

Acceptance means that people look at who we are, and they either accept or reject us because of who we are.

Recognition goes a step further, because it looks instead at what we have done and accomplished, and it holds us up high. Someone looks up to you with pride and says,

"I wish I could be like you. I think you are great."

When they do that it meets a need inside. We all have a need for others to look to us and recognize what we have done.

Maybe you have gone to a lot of effort to do things in life and nobody notices you. Often the main person involved in either creating or meeting this need in a child is the father, rather than the mother.

A father should notice his children, make a fuss of them and recognize what the child is doing. A child may draw little pictures and bring them to dad, expecting him to say,

''Wow this is an awesome picture."

This is a little thing, but parents often fail in this. Fathers are too busy with other things. They have work to do and other things that are important.

The child grows up feeling that he or she was not recognized. Perhaps the rest of the family also does not recognize what the child does.

Perhaps you were given all the dirty work to do and your brothers and sisters got away without having to do that. Nobody appreciated or recognized the hard work that you did.

We all grow up in life with some of these experiences. So there is now a driving force in you that will not allow you to fulfill a normal career.

You have to be above average. It is not enough to be simply good at what you do. You have to be better than everyone else.

You have to draw attention to yourself and have people noticing you. You want them to rave about you and tell you that you are really great.

There is a continual need for affirmation and being recognized. Sadly though, both acceptance and recognition are like deep voids inside that are never satisfied.

Even if you do find people that will accept or recognize you, that deep inner need is never fully satisfied. It is a thirst that you cannot quench.

This affects people in their careers. But it affects you even more in your 'spiritual career' - your work for the Lord. That's because ministry is serving others, not trying to meet your own needs.

If you have a need to be accepted and recognized then this will color your ministry and make you less effective. You will be wondering all the time what people think of you and your ministry.

Are they accepting the kind of ministry you are giving? Do they recognize how well you preach? Do they recognize how hard you work for the Lord?

When these things color your ministry, it will become less effective, and it will fail.

Achievement

So what is the correct desire you can have in place of those needs? It is called achievement.

A desire for achievement is not based on what someone else does. It does not involve you competing with someone else or trying to be better than them. It is not trying to impress someone so that they will accept or recognize you.

Achievement involves fighting against yourself and setting your own goals in life. You decide what you want to be or attain. You have a picture in your mind of what you can see yourself becoming.

There is instead a driving force in you, to reach the goal that you set for yourself. And there is nothing wrong with having that motivation while you are doing the work of the ministry.

You may set a goal in your heart of winning thousands of souls for the Lord. That is wonderful, and when you set this goal in your heart you can go out and do great things for the Lord.

Perhaps you have a burning desire to be used by God and to change people's lives. You may want to move in the miraculous and reach out to touch and heal the sick.

There is nothing wrong with this kind of motivation, because you are not doing it to draw attention to yourself. You are doing it because you cry out to see people's lives changed.

You see broken lives and you want to help them. You have a desire within to achieve great things for the Lord. These are some of the motivations we have, and often we have the wrong ones.

But here is what makes all of this foolish and deceptive. You do not realize that if you reach out to others, taking your eyes off yourself and pouring into them, they will accept you with open arms.

They will recognize you and tell you what a wonderful job you have done. Even if you did not aim for these two things, you would still get them automatically. But we get so wrapped up in our own needs that we lose the very thing that we desire.

If you can take your eyes off yourself and pour out to the needs you see in others, then God will provide back to you those deep needs you have.

Post A Review For This Book