Sorry about the delay in my blog being posted this time! Last week was VERY busy around here, with Revival Services at church, a youth activity at our house, and a bridal shower! Whew!
Just six days from now, my husband and I will be celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary. Even though we got married when we were very young, that still seems incredible... how can it be 40 years? But when I consider that we have three adult children and seven grandchildren, as well as a few more pounds and wrinkles.....well, it's true! I will probably be writing more about our special anniversary in a later post.
As I was thinking about our upcoming anniversary, I realized that we also have an anniversary of another kind this year. It is the 25th anniversary of my husband's yielding to the call of God to preach. My husband was called to preach later in life. He had been a businessman for 15 years, and quite a successful one at that. We both went through a time of resisting God's call on our lives. As you can well imagine, it meant HUGE changes in our life - selling a beautiful home with several acres of land, quitting a secure job with good pay and benefits, and moving our three children to another state in order for my husband to study for the ministry. But through all of that, God gave me peace and this one primary desire: to invest my life in others. We all invest our lives in something. But only investing our lives for the Lord counts for eternity. During this time, God especially used two verses in my life: One was my life verse in 1 Samuel 12:24 - "Only fear the Lord and serve Him with all your heart, for consider what great things He has done for you." The other is from Luke 12:48b ' ..."for unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required..." God has blessed me with so much, and now He was asking me to give back to Him.
Over these 25 years since we made that decision, we have learned a lot. A lot of what you do in the ministry is never taught in the classroom! I have had some fun remembering some of the things we have done through the years: dressing up in various costumes for VBS, grilling a lot of hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken (sometimes in the rain!) for church picnics, installing and painting drywall and putting a new roof on our church in Illinois, building sets and rehearsing skits, giving out brochures and New Testaments, playing a lot of crazy games (and not just with the teens!), moving the church office from our home into a new (to us) church building, setting up a church library from scratch, building bonfires and driving tractors for hayrides, hosting Christmas Open House in our home for the whole church, building the base for a giant banana split, taking youth groups and kids to and from camp and retreats....and that's just the things I can think of. You could say we definitely believe in being a "hands-on pastor."
But above all, we have learned that ministry means one thing: investing your life in people. There have been many, many hours of doing that in many different ways. We have taught, discipled, mentored, and most of all loved the people that God has sent our way. There have been surgeries and serious illnesses that we have sat and prayed through, deaths and funerals where we comforted the best we could. There have been tough family situations requiring hours of counsel. We have laughed with them, cried with them, and spent countless hours praying with them. In short, we have knit our hearts together with theirs. That is what God called us to do.
And yet...whenever you invest your lives in people, you are taking a risk. The risk is that the very people who you have spent hours ministering to and investing your lives in can hurt you. We have discovered over the years that it seems like the ones we poured ourselves into the most also hurt us the most. People will misunderstand you. They hear things and don't come to you about it. People reject your counsel and your help. They decide that they want something other than what you have to offer them. And it hurts. And hardest of all, some of them make choices that take them away from God.
But even in this, I have learned. We may think we can protect our hearts from being hurt by avoiding building relationships with the people God sends us. The temptation to do that is great. However, when we do that, we are not really investing our lives in others. We are protecting our own interests and focusing on ourselves. That is NOT what God intends for us to do.
The other truth is this: when we are hurt by people, it makes me think of Jesus. There is no one who suffered more greatly or more unjustly than He did, and there is no one who gave of Himself more than He. It shames me to realize how I sometimes disappoint or turn away from the One who has given His very life for me. When you consider all that He does for us, it makes what we do for Him seem so small and trivial.
What - and who - are you investing your life in? When all is said and done, what will you be known for? A saying that I learned as a child has stayed with me all these years, and the older I get, the more it rings true for me:
Only one life, 'twill soon be past.
Only what's done for Christ will last.
Lovingly,
Kathi
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