Out of My League

In Luke 10 Jesus said that no one, after setting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

As some friends and family are aware, I am a youth pastor candidate at a small community church near Spokane. I will preach the Sunday sermon on July 29 and that afternoon there will be a congregational vote to decide on calling me or not.

This ministry is totally out of my league.

The hindering part of getting up to a new task is examining the difficulty, examining all the reasons why it can't or won't be done, and most of all looking back to where we've been. A farmer doesn't get behind the plow and then decide he can't do it after thinking of a time when he was not a farmer. God calls us to His service out of our past garbage. He calls us first out of death and into life, so is it really any wonder that He calls us to tasks which are higher than we are?
It's amazing how often when God calls us to some task we have the audacity to make it about us, when all along no part of the Christian life begins or ends with us. Was creation about us? No, it was about Him because He made male and female in His image. He made male and female...in His image and called them "man." This means there was some supreme function he created them to do. After all, the Hebrew verb bara, the word "create" in Genesis 1, is not an existence oriented word, as if the main fact communicated is that God created out of nothing, but creation in the ancient world was function oriented. To create was to give order and purpose.
The main point is that God made man with a function of being in His image and reflecting Him in the world. That means that although it involves us, our creation begins and ends with God. It's not about us.
Our salvation is also not about us. Colossians 1 says that the reason He redeemed mankind was to become preeminent over all things. God shows his overwhelming, beautiful, terrifyingly holy character in His giving His own life to save those He loves who hate Him, so that He would ensure He reign over all things. Our salvation is about Him. It's not about us.

So when God calls us to some new difficult task, chances are it's not really about us. So instead of thinking "You want me to do THAT??" Maybe we should think "You're going to do THAT???" And like a friend of mine said once, maybe when God says to jump, maybe He doesn't want you to ask how high. Maybe he just wants you to jump.

And so if God calls me to this youth ministry job (and those who know me know how far away youth ministry is from what I've wanted to do), I won't ask God how He thinks I'm going to be able to pull it off. I'm going to assume from day one that I will not be able to do it and that my own efforts will fail. I will assume God's work will be done in spite of me and that He will build His Church.