Tuesday, November 13, 2007

An Abraham type of call story

Three years ago, I was teaching band in Seymour, IA. When God started calling me to ministry, more specifically to Luther Seminary, I fought it. Maybe it's more accurate to say I didn't fight it because I'd fought it twice before. But I still thought the idea was nuts because at the time, I had no desire to come back to the Lutheran church. God made clear to me what Paul said in one of his letters to the Corinthians. He said, "who is Apollos? Who is Paul? Nothing, but servants through whom you came to believe. For it is Paul who planted, Apollos who watered, but God who gave the growth." So I decided to pray this out and see what God was up to.
Three years later, I'm at seminary. When I realized God was calling me here and wasn't going to let me run away from it this time, I had no clue what God was doing. I was just simply stepping out in faith. I was talking to someone about my candidacy committee's decision on my endorsement, which I'm 100% OK with. I had been asked by someone on my committee if I had ever thought about going to a Baptist seminary and pursuing ordained ministry within the Baptist denomination. I said I hadn't because when I began praying and asking God how He planned on carrying this out, He revealed Luther Seminary to me. So I decided to do the MDiv track which leads to ordained ministry, though I had no idea why I even decided to do that. Maybe I could have become a member of a Baptist church and gone through candidacy in the Baptist denomination but still have gone to Luther, but that's not exactly the way God paved for me. Somehow, He paved this way for me, and I have no idea why.
Back to the conversation with one of my classmates. I was telling her about this and she related my story to Abraham's story in Genesis. God called Abraham to simply go to the land He would show him. Abraham obeyed while not having any idea what God was up to. I have no idea what God is up to, but I believe God's in total control and will reveal what He's up to when I need to know. Right now, I'm just simply praying about a particular type of ministry that God is slowly giving me a desire for and doing some of my own research about that ministry. Even as I pray about that ministry, I still have no clue if that's why God called me to Luther to begin with. So I continue walking down this journey, trusting that God will bring to fruition what He has begun in me.

No comments: