A Quest To Serve

 I had an interesting conversation the other day with a coworker, and yes, it involved Jesus. He was saying how his friends seemed to all die at the same age of 47. He's coming up on that age so I asked the question, "What if you only had ___ amount of years to live?"
The question seemed to hit me with the impact I had intended for him as soon as it rolled off my tongue. What if I had only x amount of years? What if I had but months? Or days? How do I want to spend them. And it was in the response I gave for my own question, "Serving others," that I had one of those "Ah Ha!" moments.
 These last few weeks have been very...I don't know how to put it, life altering. Beki and I have thrown our all into Redeemer Fellowship and have been excited to finally know the Lord has called us to a church to serve in. In addition I had a fantastic weekend with these amazing men sold out for Christ who are loaded with potential.

Then there's my quest to seek out employment in the ministry. This quest is the one I grapple with the most. In a lot of ways I look at my seminary education as the catch all to landing a job; as though a degree suddenly opens up a position automatically. Though it might open up more doors than without I still know that I can't simply rely on an education to cover over my past...
Ah! There it is. See, here's what I struggle with the most: Will my past create fewer opportunities, or better yet, will it eliminate them altogether? On the one hand I know how big God is and that if he wants He'll open doors when they seem shut. But on the other, Where does the freedom for humans to reject even His chosen factor in?
Here's what I mean, I focus so much on this "jacket" that some say deems me a reject. So what does that make me? A product of the endless paper trail of poor decision making. I'm not good with rejection and it seems so often that rejection comes before opportunity with me. And 99.9% of the time it comes before I even get to meet a person. Because I know that if I could at least have that chance, an encounter with me increases my stock 10 fold. (whatever that idiom means)


But is it not the .01 percent we Christians hold on to in struggle? Is not the Creator of the universe, Healer of the lame, Restorer to the broken just as powerful with that tenth of a percent? I don't even think He needs that! Heck, I'm sure that God, no matter what situation we find ourselves in, doesn't even need a possibility because with Him "all things are possible!" 

So I hold out for that .01% chance that somehow the Lord will call me into the ministry if that be His will for my life and nothing, not even a piece of a paper, will stop that. In the meantime I live with this motto: Work Hard - Live Pure - Leave the Rest To God.