Ephesians 3:7-9
“This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities. And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along.” Isn’t that amazing?
Let me ask you a question this morning: What would you say is your life work? What’s job here on earth? While you’re thinking about the answer to that question, let me share with you how one person answered that question:
Someone identified only as Harry:
In May of 1998, traveling through the Nevada desert, I discovered my life’s work, namely to enjoy a fine meal at a Taco Bell in each of the 50 US states. Unfortunately, my progress towards this goal has been higher in recent years than I had anticipated, with completion of my life’s work occurring in Anchorage on September 10, 2005. By most accounts, I still have somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 or so years of life expectancy to fill up somehow. I’m open to suggestions... I love this stuff…
God has Given You and Me a Unique Ministry
“Of this gospel I was made a minister……to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things”
Paul’s ministry of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles was not something he thought up on his own, or even something to which he had aspired. It was a ministry that had been given to him by God. It was God who had made him to be a minister, or a servant, of the gospel. The word translated “minister” here is the word from which we get our English word “deacon”. It is a word that originally meant to run errands, and outside the Bible it referred to one who waited on tables, or a servant.
Paul’s ministry, or service, of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles was unique to him. It was a ministry that had been specifically assigned to him by Jesus. But Paul is not the only one to whom God has assigned a unique ministry. I’m convinced, based on the Scriptures, that God has given every one of His children a unique ministry.
I know what some of you are thinking right now – “ministry” is just for the pastors and the paid staff. I may have a job, but I’m not really a minister. Our problem is that we just have the wrong idea of what a minister is.
As we’ve already seen, the word “minister” just means a servant. You are simply someone who serves the kingdom of God. We’ve already seen in Ephesians 2:10 “that all of God’s children are created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has prepared in advance for us to do.” That’s ministry. When we get to Ephesians 4, we’re going to find that all of God’s people are to be engaged in works of service – that’s ministry.
You don’t have to quit your job to become a minister/servant. You can be a minister right where you are. When you serve the needs of other people, you’re being a minister. When God adopts us into his family, He provides each of us with a unique spiritual DNA that equips us for a unique ministry. And those ministries are as varied and different as our fingerprints and DNA. But there is no such thing as a Christian without a ministry.
I love this quote from Enrichment magazine from a Sunday school teacher who is also a public school teacher. She has a pretty good handle on this principle: I have known since I was a young child that I was meant to become a teacher. It is a career that runs through my family. About eight years ago I thought that I should try something other than teaching. That pursuit did not fulfill me the way teaching did and I learned from the experience that God designed me to be a teacher. I get the most joy from teaching those students that most adults shrink from: pre-teens and teenagers. When I was a beginning teacher with my first class, I could scarcely believe the trust society, parents and the students had in me. I am still humbled by it, and rely on the fear that I may lead someone astray to keep me on track as an educator. I want to give back to the system that gave me such a hunger for knowledge. And I want to live out the lesson that I most hope to teach my students: we each make a profound difference in the lives of each other.
God has designed each one of us to be a minister. Whatever gift that is. You are Loved!
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