Scars and struggles on the way, but with joy our hearts can say, never once did we ever walk alone. Carried by your constant grace, held within Your perfect peace, never once, no we never walked alone.
-Never Once, Matt Redman
Sometimes it takes going through a trial to completely understand a characteristic of God. Like, you know He is full of grace, you completely get what that means and what that looks like, and then you do something dumb, and He extends His grace to you and you are sitting there like, “oh, now I actually understand His grace because I have experienced it.”
I experienced God’s faithfulness in this over the last few days. I knew what it meant that God was faithful. I had heard many times from other people that God is faithful, and you can trust Him. I truly believed that. But there is a new understanding to it when you experience God’s faithfulness in a way you have never experienced it before.
In order to get to this weekend, I need to back up to 2012 – my junior and senior year of high school. I am looking at colleges, and deciding on where to go. The one thing I knew for certain at this point in my life was that I wanted to go into Youth Ministry. When I decided that I wanted to go into ministry, I don’t think I had much of an idea of what truly goes into it. I knew that it included hanging out with teenagers, getting to continue to act like a child (sometimes) and telling people about Jesus.
So I graduated from high school and went off to Cedarville to study Youth Ministry. I had wonderful professors and learned tons in chapel. I did a summer internship that helped me get hands-on experience in ministry. While all of these things are good, there is only so much that college experiences will do to prepare you for actually working in ministry and for being the one in charge.
I began working in ministry in some sense of the word when I was a freshman in high school. I was always at the church doing something, whether going to youth group, serving as a student leader at middle school youth group or going to the student leadership team meetings. When I got to college, it took me a little while to find the church I wanted to regularly attend, but once I did, I began to regularly serve there. I would eventually come on as the student ministry intern while in college and did so until I graduated.
After graduation, I was hired at a church in Pittsburgh, back in the school district where I grew up. I was constantly involved in something ministry related while working there. The church had two services, one Sunday morning and a mid-week service on Wednesday. I made it a priority while there to be in service, listening and soaking in, once a week. If I went more than three or four services either teaching or helping, I noticed myself getting worn down.
I moved back to Ohio in June and within a matter of weeks, I was working at a new church. It was unexpected, but it was good. In my mind, I was going to come back to Ohio for six months to prepare for the Race and I was going to sit and soak as much as possible for these six months. I was going to give a little bit, but I was going to soak as much as I could in order to give, give, give when I leave in January. That’s not quite what the Lord had in mind.
My role at the new church was to help equip the teachers, help with the direction of the children’s ministry and decide on a curriculum for the ministry. All of it is a process – ministry itself is a process.
As I spent the last three months serving here, I noticed myself becoming more drained. I originally attributed it to the combination of working two jobs and baking enough cookies to feed a small army.
Last weekend, I went to a young adult retreat through the church I used to work for in Pittsburgh. I knew that I needed the weekend as a way to get refreshed and it was going to be a nice 48 hours off of baking cookies. What I didn’t realize was how God was going to break me down.
In ministry, and in life, you need to have a balance of giving and receiving spiritually. It isn’t healthy if all you do is soak in what you are hearing from pastors and soaking in what you are reading in your Bible daily. You need to share with others all the goodness that God is teaching you.
But the opposite can be just as bad. If all you do is give and give and give, your spiritual cup is going to run dry really fast. You need people pouring into you in order to have Jesus flowing out to give to others.
Unfortunately (well, I guess it was probably a good thing), God showed me over the weekend that I was doing the second of the two. I had been giving everything I had for three straight months without getting Jesus at all and I completely fell apart over the weekend. God showed me just how much I need Him and how I can’t do this by myself.
Ministry doesn’t exist without Him, He is the reason we do ministry, and as pastors or children’s ministry directors or worship leaders or whatever your title is in ministry, you need to be poured into.
I have heard multiple times that you can’t teach the Word of God well unless you are learning it yourself. For the longest time, I took that as needing daily personal time in the Word. I never understood how this related to weekly hearing the Word from a pastor.
As I was completely broken down this weekend, God showed me His faithfulness more than ever. Yes there may be scars and struggles, but because of God’s faithfulness and because of His grace, we can have joy because He won’t leave us. He didn’t leave us during the dark times, and He won’t leave us in the dark, challenging times ahead. We can look back and see how much He has done and how far He brought us.
I have learned more about God in these last few days because I have been broken down and shown how much I truly need to rely on Him.
God is faithful friends, He won’t fail you, you can trust Him.
