Now, what exactly is ministry? I'm sure that word puts different pictures into the mind of each different person. But ministry is kind of like if you were to compare your natural world and your natural life with your spiritual life. In your natural life, you would look for a career or the main thing that you're going to do in your life.

Well, ministry is the equivalent in your spiritual life. If you like, it's your spiritual career. If you want to look at it that way.

So, if we are going to fulfill our spiritual career, we need to know how to do it. And unfortunately, a lot of people make it very complicated. And most people actually never find their ministry or actually eventually carry out their ministry because they just don't know how to go about it.

Now, in our natural life, it's very easy to understand. We know what's involved. You find out what you want to be when you grow up.

You build up in your mind your desires or what kind of career you want to follow. And then as you finish school, you go to college or wherever to learn and to develop the knowledge that you need to qualify to eventually take the position and to fulfill the career that you desired to follow. Now, unfortunately, because ministry is so very similar, we tend to take the same approach in preparing ourselves and in carrying out our ministry to what we do in pursuing our career.

Now, although they look very similar, unfortunately, they are not the same thing and you cannot approach them both in the same way. And so, I'd like to show you as we go through this first part of this teaching, how to identify and understand the difference between a career and a ministry and how you should actually be carrying out your ministry. Now, the word ministry is not quite what everybody think it is.

You see, if you're thinking of your ministry as being your spiritual career, the last thing that you actually have in your mind is what the word ministry actually means in the original language in the Bible. You see, a minister is not somebody in an exalted position of authority that is highly qualified and exercises domination authority over people. But a minister, according to Bible terminology, is quite simply a servant.

Oh dear, it's quite the opposite picture, isn't it? Ministry means effectively service. Well, you know, I suppose in a career it's the same sort of thing. Ultimately, you rise up and your purpose in life is to serve humanity, to make your mark on this world and to do something, perhaps, that will change the lives of others.

But usually, unfortunately, we don't have that idea with a career, do we? The idea with a career is I want to rise up and make more money than everybody else and I want to rise up and I want to become famous and well-known and I'd like to come to a position of authority where I can control other people. Now, those three temptations have been there from the beginning. They were there in the Garden of Eden when the serpent came to tempt Eve and Satan tried to bring the same temptations to Jesus.

And, you see, it's the desire for fortune and fame and control. And those are very dangerous when we mix those with ministry. Now, add to that and you'll see that there are another two very important things that we need in life that, unfortunately, also begin to color our approach to ministry and get mixed in with our motives for wanting to do ministry.

The first is acceptance. Now, what is acceptance? Acceptance is quite simply having other people take you just the way you are. Not rejecting you, but accepting you the way you are, being ready to be associated with you, to receive you into their group and their company and consider you part of the group.

You're not the odd person out. When you get together with a group of people, they consider you to be one of the group and they don't treat you any differently to what they treat anybody else. That is simply acceptance.

But acceptance, of course, goes much deeper than that because a lot of us grow up having faced in life rejection. Now, you may have been rejected for a lot of different reasons. You may have been rejected because of where you come from, because of your racial group, because of your looks, because of your height, because of your weight, because of your gender.

There could be all sorts of things that cause people to reject you and you don't feel accepted. But acceptance actually starts even deeper than that. It starts way back in your relationship with the first parent that you get to know properly and that is your mother.

So the mother is very actively involved in fulfilling a need in a child for accepting. And if there's anybody in the world who will accept a child, no matter how ugly it is, no matter how naughty it is, it's the mother. The mother is always there to love and care for the child.

And so the mother gives the very first image of acceptance for a child. But each of us, we go through different experiences. And some of us, we were not fully accepted by our mothers.

Some of us, our mothers were busy working or too busy with other things or had other children. Whatever the case may be, we felt that our mother didn't give us the acceptance and we went out into the world. Or maybe even before you went out into the world, you had brothers and sisters and siblings and other family members and they didn't accept you and you didn't fit in.

There are so many things in life that produce in us a big void inside. And we still feel that people are not going to accept us. Now you start mixing that in with your career and you have a driving force within your career that will always be controlled by other people.

Because everything that you do is always designed to get people to accept you. And as a result, you're caught in a situation where you can't be the most efficient that you'd like to be. Because you're always concerned about what people think and you have to try and somehow adjust your behavior for people.

Now take that into the realm of the ministry and the same thing applies. You see, ministry is something that we're doing for the Lord. It's taking our place in our spiritual life, in God's economy, in God's picture.

And the scripture says that when we are born again and we receive Jesus as our Savior, we become a member of the body of Christ. So if you like to think of yourself as being one of the parts of the body, you're fitting in with a whole lot of other parts of the body. And so the hand and the feet and the eyes and the ears and the nose, they each recognize one another and need one another and fit in with one another.

And if you're not feeling accepted, you're not fitting in with the rest of the body. It's very difficult to accept the place that you are. And you may get this idea that you're just this ugly big nose.

And you don't want to be the nose because it's ugly and people don't like big ugly noses. You see, so your ministry is now affected by your view of yourself and that deep need for acceptance. And then the second thing that stands in the way is something very similar to acceptance, but it's not the same.

It's recognition. See, now acceptance means quite simply that people look at who we are and either reject us as being that way or they accept us just the way we are. Recognition goes a step further because recognition looks at the things that we have done and accomplished and holds us up high.

When somebody looks up to us with pride, when somebody looks up to us and says, Oh, I wish I could be like you, I think you're really great, it meets within us a need for others to look to us and to recognize the things that we've done. We've gone to a lot of effort to do a lot of things in life and nobody notices. And very often the main person actually involved in creating and meeting this need in the child now is not the mother but the father.

And so very often the father is supposed to notice the children, make a fuss of them, recognize what the child is doing. The child will draw little pictures and bring it to dad and expect dad to say, Wow, that's really an awesome picture. Little things like that.

Parents fail, fathers are too busy with other things in life, they've got work to do, they've got all sorts of things to do. The child grows up feeling that it wasn't recognized. The child is not recognized by what it does in the rest of the family.

Maybe you just were given all the dirty work to do and your brothers and sisters got away with not having to do that and nobody really appreciated or recognized the hard work that you did. You feel that you are not appreciated and not recognized. We all grow up in life with some of these experiences.

And now there comes again this driving force that says, I can't just go and fulfill a normal career, I've got to be above the normal. I can't be good at what I do, I've got to be better than everybody else. I've got to draw attention to myself and have people notice me and say, Wow, you are really better than other people.

You are really great. I need this continual affirmation of being lifted up and recognized. Now the sad thing is that both acceptance and recognition are like deep voids within us that are never met.

And even if we do find people that will accept us, and even if we do find people that will recognize us, that deep inner need is just never satisfied. It's like a thirst that we cannot quench. Now that will affect people in their careers, but it will affect them even more when it comes to doing your spiritual career, your work for the Lord.

Because you see, ministry is serving others. Ministry is not trying to meet your needs. And if you have need to be accepted, you have a need to be recognized, and your ministry is now colored by that, you cannot be as effective in ministry.

Because all the time you are looking at, what will people think of me in my ministry? Are people accepting the kind of ministry that I'm giving? Do people recognize what I preach? Do they recognize how hard I work for the Lord? These things color our ministry and make us ineffective. And unfortunately, your ministry will fail. Now what is the correct desire? What is the correct desire that we could have in place of those? It's something called achievement.

Desire for achievement. You see, achievement is not based on what anybody else does. Achievement isn't you competing with somebody else and trying to be better than them.

Achievement isn't you trying to impress somebody else and getting them to accept you or to recognize you. Achievement is actually fighting against yourself and saying, this is a goal I set for myself in life. This is what I want to attain.

This is what I want to be. This is the vision, this is the picture I have in my mind of what I can see myself becoming. And so there's a driving force within you to reach the goal that you set for yourself.

Now there's nothing wrong with having that motivation when you come into the work of the ministry. You may set within your heart that you want to win thousands of souls to the Lord. And that's wonderful.

If you set that achievement, you go out and you do great things for God. You may have within yourself a desire to really be used by God and to change people's lives. When it comes to the miraculous, you may want to reach out and touch and heal the sick and so many other things.

There's nothing wrong with those motivations because you're not doing it to draw attention to yourself. You're doing it because you so cry to see people's lives changed. You see the broken people out there and you really want to help them.

And within yourself you have this deep desire to achieve wonderful things for the Lord. So these are motivations. Wrong ones.

And unfortunately most of us have got those. Now here is the silly thing about it. Here is the deception of it.

Do you not realize that if you were to reach out, taking your eyes off yourself and reach out and minister to other people, to serve others and to pour into them everything that God's given you, they're going to accept you with open arms. They're going to recognize you and thank you and say, wow, you've done such an awesome job. Don't you realize that if you didn't aim for these two things, you'd get them automatically.

You'd get them automatically. But we get so wrapped up in our own needs that we lose the very thing that we need. If you can take your eyes off yourself and pour out and see the needs of others, God will provide back into you those deep needs for acceptance and recognition that you have.

Now I'd like to look at another word that we use when it comes to ministry. And it's one of the most misunderstood words. And I want to try and explain it to you and clarify it to you.

And I hope that by the time I'm finished, you're going to understand the subject a lot better. And you'll be able to now come to a place where you can be the most effective in your ministry. And it's this word, calling.

Calling. I want you to see that there is a difference between ministry and a calling. Now we look at people who've risen up and achieved great things in life and we can say that was their calling in life.

They were just destined to do that. And very often we look at a calling as being a kind of a destiny. It's kind of the unique thing that each person was meant to do in this world and in their life.

You see now, ministry is not necessarily a calling. You see, your ministry can be based on your personal desires. You have deep burning desires in you of things you want to accomplish.

And some of those desires may actually be based on your own past experiences. And so you have a desire to help other people, you have a desire to help poor people, you have a desire to help rejected people, because you've been through some of these experiences in life. And so you have deep burning desires within you to do things, but you want to do them in the name of the Lord.

You want to do them using the word of God and using all the abilities that God has given you. You want to effectively be a servant to others and really help them and minister to them. But you see, it doesn't take a specific calling for you to fulfill a ministry.

Everybody can do these things. Everybody can do a ministry. But it doesn't mean that that ministry is your calling.

It's not necessarily your unique destiny in life and the one thing that you have been set apart to accomplish in this world and in this life. Calling is totally different. Firstly, you can be born with certain influences that come from your parents.

And as you go through life, your experiences begin to build desires and things up into you. And you can have many of these orientations that you are now using in ministry that you could have had actually even before you became a Christian. But you see, a calling is something that's specifically given to you by the Lord.

And it can never come before you're born again. Only after you're born again and you're now actually placed into the body of Christ and you're now officially a member of God's family, only now does God have a specific purpose and plan for your life. Now only do you have a calling.

Yes, God knew way before you were born already what you were going to do and He knew ahead what your calling was going to be. But you didn't actually receive that calling until you were born again. And now that you're born again and you know that as a Christian you are called.

Because the scripture says that all believers are called. Called to what? Well, we're called to salvation, firstly. We're called to become more and more like Jesus.

We all have a similar calling, but we also have something unique. But you see, your calling doesn't necessarily remain in one place. It doesn't remain static.

Your calling can actually progressively be increased over time. And you may start out with a specific calling from God and an ability and a direction, which is the only thing you're capable of right now. But as you grow and increase in knowledge and wisdom and experience, God can now trust you with bigger things and your calling can grow and actually can become much bigger.

So it can be increased over time. Now how does it get increased over time? Well, the bad news is there's a price to pay. You see, here is where it becomes very similar to your career now.

You don't just say, I'm going to be a doctor and set up shop and practice. You can't say, I'm going to be a lawyer or anybody professional without going through qualification and proving yourself and passing the tests and then coming to a place where you have been approved to carry out that activity. Now a calling requires a price for you to pay before you can rise up from the lower levels into the higher levels.

Now, calling is not based on your natural abilities. That is why it could not have been there before you were born again. Because no matter what natural abilities, no matter how good you are, God's call on your life actually has nothing to do with that.

Now what does God require from somebody that he calls? The scripture is kind of confusing on that. The scripture says God has chosen the weak and the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. You say, but I'm too weak for God to have a big calling on me, for God to have a big plan for my life.

Well, you may be surprised to know that your weakness is probably the thing that qualifies you for calling more than anything else. I'm not terribly intelligent. I'm really foolish and naive and stupid.

And I see all these clever people out there doing such awesome things. I'm sure God can really use them. I know what he can really do with me.

God says, you're my man. You're the one I'm looking for. You're the one I'm looking for because I don't need you to have any abilities whatsoever because I have the abilities that you need and I will give you the abilities for your calling.

There's only two qualities that you need to qualify for the calling of God. Humility and love. Humility especially.

Not wanting to exalt yourself or lift yourself up, but just a tender heart of love to reach out to others and to be used by the Lord. That's all that you need. Now you may be sitting there thinking, I'd really love to do such great things for God, but I can't be a great big preacher like that.

I can't stand up and preach and teach. I can't write great things. I don't have any musical talent.

I don't have anything. I look at myself, I don't even know how God can use me because I've got nothing to give him. You'd be amazed what God can do with nothing.

If you'll just give it to him in simple submission and humility and then God can take that and God can add to it his part and he can produce that calling in your life. So I want you to understand the difference between ministry and calling. And this is very important because people tend to think, well you know I have this burning desire in me.

It's been in me for years. Is that a ministry or a calling? Is that a ministry or a calling? We don't know, do we? We don't know. How then do we go about finding out what is our calling? It's easy to see a desire for ministry and you know very often we have a desire for ministry that's based not on God's call at all but simply on what we desire to do.

So how do we go about finding your calling? Firstly, you need to realize that your calling is not based on natural desires. Now each of us have different temperamental strengths and we got a complete study on the temperaments, on the four main temperaments and sometimes different temperaments have better strengths than others. Your temperamental strengths do not determine your calling.

Do not think that because you are temperamentally very capable of communicating with people and persuading them that God is necessarily going to use you to do a ministry that involves that kind of activity. People so often get this confused. They think, well, I'm really good at that.

You know, you are really good, you're such a good listener, you must be a counsellor. God's called you to be a counsellor, that's what it is, because you're such a good listener and you have such wisdom and you have such ability. These are natural abilities and natural temperamental strengths.

Don't ever confuse your natural temperamental strengths with the call of God. And then you may have had a tough time in life. You may have lived a life of poverty, of facing sickness and disease, of rejection, of all sorts of things.

Don't think that God has now called you to minister to other people who've been through that. So, Harvey, your family died, God has not called you to minister to bereaved people. Don't automatically assume that your experiences in life were God building you up for your calling.

No. Well, could you do those as a ministry? Yes, you could. But it's not your calling.

You see, you do not need the anointing of God to carry out those ministries. You could even use the anointing of God to help with it if you wanted to, but you don't need the anointing of God to fulfil those ministries. And you know what? Even unbelievers have the exact same desires burning in them.

There are charitable organisations in this world that are doing such wonderful good things. Are they called of God? No, they're in a world system that doesn't honour God at all. So, your calling is not an inner burning desire within you based on your temperamental strengths, based on your experiences in life, based on any dreams and visions that you've had.

Your calling is unique, and you did not have it before you were born again. And here's the part that makes it stand out the clearest. The fact that most other people don't have the same desire.

If you want to find one quality that shows your calling, it's when suddenly you desire to do a ministry that other people don't want to do. Well, what brought that on? And especially if it doesn't even closely relate to your experiences in life. If suddenly you have this desire to get involved in something that you're unqualified to do, that you're totally incapable of doing, and that you've never had experience with.

Now, that doesn't make sense. Good, then you're well on the way to identifying the call of God, because the call of God is absolutely unique in your life. Now, ministry's not unique at all.

Where does ministry come from? It comes from a burning desire. Ooh, ooh. You say, hang on, hang on, hang on.

I always thought that if I could find my burning core desire, that I would be able to locate what it is that God's put in me. Because that's what burns in me. So obviously the Lord must have put that there, right? I know, I used to teach this myself.

A burning inner desire does not denote a calling. Well, does that mean I can't fulfill this desire? Does it mean it would be wrong for me to do this as a ministry? Not at all. In fact, if you were to do that with love and pouring out in faith, hope and love, God will even actually anoint you with His Spirit and give you His power and give you divine ability and make you a blessing.

And He will use you mightily, even in that ministry. And you will apply the scriptural principles that whatever you shall sow, you shall reap. And as you give out, you'll get back and you'll see the results.

And you might say, I have found my ministry. But you haven't found your calling. So what do I do? Stand and wait for my calling before I do anything.

See, that's the other mistake we make. Because it may take you a long time to find your calling. Because you see, the unfolding of your calling is a progressive thing.

So you need to start where you are and begin to fulfill those as a ministry. And as you continue to do ministry, you will gradually find yourself progressively coming more and more to a place where your calling becomes clearer. Where do you start? Simple little scripture says, Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.

What is available to you right now that you can do for the Lord? Look around you and see people with needs that you can help and get involved in right now and start doing whatever is there. You say, but what if it's not my calling? Does it matter? The Lord will still bless it and you will have a tremendous sense of achievement and satisfaction by having poured out and helped and ministered to other people. And who knows, God may use that to lead you progressively to finally uncover your calling.

You see, that's the word I often use of a moving ship. A lot of people are like a ship sitting in the harbour and saying, okay Lord, if you'll just show me which way to go, I will go. So Lord, if you'll just turn my rudder, I'll get moving.

And you know, you wouldn't even know if you turned your rudder anyway and you're still waiting. It doesn't matter. Find something to do, get doing it, and the Lord will step in there and He'll start to manipulate that rudder and suddenly you'll find yourself veering off into a whole new direction.

And you think, now what's going on? I started doing that and suddenly I find myself doing this and all of a sudden a new opportunity has opened up for me to do something totally unrelated to what I was doing. And I'm finally getting to that place where you know that this is where you should be. I've often shared a story of the boy who chewed rubber and I'll share it again now for this study.

I read a story once of a little boy who kept chewing rubber. Whether it be rubber pencils, any kind of rubber he could find, he'd chew it. And his parents figured there must be something wrong with him and they had him checked up medically and he was lacking in sulphur and it seems rubber has a lot of sulphur in it.

And so what was happening is every time this little boy chewed on the rubber he was actually supplying what his body needed. Now that little guy did not know anything about sulphur and nobody taught him to eat rubber because rubber isn't food. I'm sure though before he got to eat the rubber he chewed on everything and if you've had a baby you'll know that's the first thing a baby does stick everything in its mouth.

He chewed and chewed until one day he chewed on rubber and something inside him said that tastes good, let's try that again and again and again. He said I'll keep doing that chewed all the rubbers to bits. Now sometimes that's the way it works for you to find your calling.

Start chewing on everything what doesn't burn in you and what burns in other people and what you see around you whatever you can find as an opportunity to do some kind of work or ministry for the Lord. Just keep doing it and one day you'll find suddenly something drops into place and you say hang on I can see that I seem to be moving in a special, very unique direction here that most other people aren't moving in but I really feel good about it and that can be the first sign that you're beginning to locate your calling. Realize that your calling is a supernatural thing that God will give and God will progressively unfold it to you and then you can go beyond that and you can receive specific revelation and God may decide to use somebody to give you a prophetic word.

He may give you a dream or a vision or a revelation or something to confirm to you exactly what that calling is. But when you find that calling you can then set sail pull out all the stops and head in that direction until such time as God may increase it or change it. Remember, calling is also progressive and can be increased.

So the important thing firstly now is to identify the difference between ministry and calling to look deep inside you and to get moving out of those until you find yourself gradually getting more and more focused until God begins to give you inner revelation or whatever outer revelation whatever method he uses you will eventually come to the place where you find your ministry calling. And when the two come together now you're ready only to do real ministry. And in our future lessons we're going to look at the different kinds of ministries that we can fulfill and the abilities and the tools that God gives us to fulfill various ministries and then we're going to look at some of the higher level ministries and we're going to see how God actually promotes people up to different levels of ministry calling.

By the time we finish I think you'll be able to find out exactly what your calling is and know what you should be doing to use you more and more and you can fulfill that spiritual career that you're wanting.

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