Our Passion and Pursuit

"The one aim of the call of God is the satisfaction of God, and not a call to do something for Him...We are not primarily called to do something or to go somewhere: we are called to someone." - Taken from The Call, by Os Guinness

How would God describe you and me as to what our central purpose and passion is?

PERSPECTIVE
A couple years ago, I took some valuable time to work on graduate studies in leader development, to keep a fresh perspective in life and ministry. In one class we were asked to list major paradigm shifts in our thinking in the last five years. What a great exercise! I came up with ten. One of these has been on how I view ministry. This came after I had done a major study through the Scriptures (mainly in the New Testament) as to the concept of ministry. Ministry is mentioned over and over again using different words to describe it...serving, ministering, service, and servant.

Here are some of my conclusions from that study:

Ministry always has an object in Scripture. To whom do we minister? Ministry is directed in three thrusts in the New Testament...to God, to people and to ourselves. For our purposes in this reflection we will only deal with the first two.

We are to minister to God – the vertical thrust of ministry - and horizontally to people. The vertical focuses on our walk and relationship with God..."being," our character; the horizontal focuses on "doing." Vertically...abiding; horizontally....fruitfulness.

We minister to God through worship, praise, dependence, and constant fellowship with the Father, intimacy, intercession, etc. The Great Commandment is directed first to God then to people. When I ask others what words come to their mind when they think of ministry, they seldom think of intimacy and worship of God. The word "minister" is used in the Old and New Testament as a High Priest ministered first to God for the people, and then ministers from God to the people. Both of these are primary responsibilities of a minister. We have been called to be ministers of the New Covenant (2 Corinthians 8:1-4), ministering to God and then from God to people.

We minister from God to people in love and respect by evangelism, teaching, counseling, affirmation, helps, etc. The Great Commission is directed primarily toward people...reaching and discipling the nations. But its ultimate goal is everyone under the Lordship of Christ.

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