Another fine mess...

How did I get into this mess?!  I have chosen a profession that requires me to engage wholeheartedly in striving to accomplish something that is ultimately beyond my ability to do.  I have chosen to spend my life reaching for goals that are impossible.  I am a minister.

My job is work for His Kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.  My tasks are people.  My vocation is to seek the transformation of souls.  No one can accomplish this except God Himself.  So, every day I pray and I work, I talk and I preach, I write and create, I strategize and struggle for revival and renewal.  I can write a sermon or organize a meeting, but that is nothing.  The real purpose for the sermon or the meeting are beyond me.  There's the rub.  I cannot revive a single soul.  It is not up to me to change a life.  I can feed a man, house a child, love a woman, but I cannot touch their hearts.  Only God can do that.  What kind of fool am I to struggle and agonize to accomplish something I know is impossible.

I wrestled with this as I stood on the cliffs near my home yesterday.  As the wind howled, the ocean roared, and the clouds skidded across the sky I was simultaneously filled with faith and frustration.  I know that God is Almighty.  He can do anything that He wills.  He can change lives.  He can transform churches.  He can save nations.  He can fall upon a person, a church, a town, a city, a nation, and make Himself known.  He has done it before.  So, I stood there on the cliff telling Him about what is wrong with me and the world and begging Him to pour out His Spirit.  I looked at the sky filled with dark clouds and I wondered why He wouldn't break through.  Why doesn't He do what only He can do and burn through the clouds of darkness that engulf our world!?

Then I saw something I have never seen before.  I noticed another thing happening in the sky.  I saw another layer of clouds beyond the dark storm clouds above me.  The storm was rushing toward me and over me, but all the while there were bright white wispy clouds moving the opposite direction above and beyond the darkness.  In that moment I wondered.  I remembered.  God too is always moving, always working.  His work is often shrouded and is more subtle than the darkness.  It can go without notice and get lost in the noisy evil of our world.  It doesn't make the news, but it is there.  It is ever flowing, ever moving, inexorably proceeding forward.

So, I choose to attempt the impossible.  I preach and I pray knowing that if God doesn't "show up" then it is all in vain.  I launch myself into the abyss of failure and shame knowing that if He doesn't catch me I am lost, a fool indeed.  I have no hope in life or death apart from Jesus Christ.  I expect to swing out into eternity on that.