Ministry is Not About Us

I recently spent quite a bit of hours and days working on the technical side of this blog, and in case you didn't know, this on-line space is a ministry.  In a nutshell, here's what happened.  I updated my old site and then everything went haywire.  But you, dear reader, couldn't see the issues because the problems were behind the scenes.

For days I worked to fix it.  Then my Beloved worked to fix it.  Then we called our hosting company to try to fix.  We even considered purchasing something, yep you guessed it, to try to fix it.  And of course I prayed for the Lord to fix it.  In the process, I felt like I had become a graduate of ITT Technical Institute because of all the research, repair and time involved in order to rectify the situation.

Being that I am not a computer programmer, a graphic designer, or a web site developer, nor do I want to become any of those things, goodness, it took me years to figure out how to check my voice mail on my cellphone, I soon realized that what I was doing started to make me feel like I was building this ministry for me, rather than the Lord.

Sure, the blogging program that I was working on gave me more possibilities than a simpler one, but at the same time, it also gave me more complications, which translated into more headaches, hair loss, and less time with the Lord.  It felt like the ministry was going to morph into an idol if I wasn't careful.

So, I started to examine what I was doing and why I was doing it.
Why did I feel like I needed a better program?
Is bigger, better, and faster necessarily needed in order for me to minister in Jesus' name, or was I more concerned about my name? 
Who was I trying to tell others about?
What was my original goal when I started in ministry in the first place?

What was it that God was calling me to do?
The answer was simple.

• To write on His behalf.
• To proclaim His name.

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;  1 Peter 2:9

• To lift Him up for all to see.

"And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself."  John 12:32

It's easy to get caught up in ministry and unknowingly lose sight of our first love. We can inadvertently have the wrong focus, a wrong heart and quite possibly unrealistic expectations and thus what was meant for good, turns into self worship.

Ministry is not meant for us to receive glory, but rather it is meant for God to receive the glory.

Do a heart check to make sure your motives are pure in whatever ministry God has called you to.  Here's some questions to ask yourself:

1. Why are you involved in your particular ministry?  Is it because you're needed, loved, and accepted there?  Or perhaps you shine in that position?  Or is it because God has called you to it?  There is a difference.  One will draw you to the Lord and the other will focus more on 'self'.
2. Does spending time on what you're doing draw you and others closer to the Lord or further away from Him?
3. Whose ministry is it anyways?  Yours or the Lord's?

All these questions helped me in making my decision.  I needed a blogging program that was simpler; one that kept my focus on Christ and the calling at hand.  I needed a tool that made it easier for me to concentrate on building His kingdom rather than my own.

Let me leave you with these thoughts:

Ministry is not about us but all too often self gets in the way.  Our pride creeps in just like it did with the disciples when they argued about which one of them was the greatest.

After they arrived at Capernaum and settled in a house, Jesus asked his disciples, "What were you discussing out on the road? "But they didn't answer, because they had been arguing about which of them was the greatest.He sat down, called the twelve disciples over to him, and said, "Whoever wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else."  Mark 9:33-35

Ministry is not about how good we are.  It's not about how spiritually deep we are.  It's not about how committed to the Lord we are or even how spiritually gifted we are, because all these things come from the Lord.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.  James 1:17

Rather ministry should be purely about pouring our lives out for Jesus Christ.


Live a poured out life for the Master,