Response to Grace by clbcommunications

My first job was delivering newspapers for the Bergen Record when I was twelve years old. Rain, snow, or shine, six days a week I lugged papers to the homes along my route. Every Wednesday evening I would go to each house to collect $1.75, hoping that they wouldn't ask for change. I was basically working for tips, and, yes, people who tipped well never got a wrinkled paper and always got the comic page on Sunday morning. I'd like to tell you that I found great satisfaction in my calling as a paperboy, but that would be stretching the truth—a lot. In reality it was the only avenue open for me to make money, so that's what I did. Although I was providing a service, I wasn't serving anyone other than myself.

So how do you view your profession? Who are you serving and why? Since my time as a paperboy, I have been a carpenter, youth minister, salesman, estimator, manager, and now a pastor. I am convinced that in each one of those roles, God has been working through me for his glory, even when I was not aware of it.

I started seminary in 1992 and served as a youth minister for a few years while going to school. I knew that God had called me into ministry, but after a few years I was burned out and felt like I wasn't getting the job done. I was engaged, broke, and working too many hours to be healthy. After much prayer, I eventually resigned my position and got a straight job. My thinking was that I'd be away for a year or two and then return to finish my last year of seminary. Then I'd serve as pastor of a church. But God had a bigger lesson for me to learn.

As my wife Tanya and I started our life together, I had a new job, a new home and a new church. I had never expected to feel content working outside of full-time ministry, but I loved volunteering at church and working a regular job. I began to understand that, as a husband, salesman and Sunday School teacher, I was serving God just as much as when I was a youth minister. And as a volunteer, perhaps my motives to do a good job were less selfish, since I wasn't being paid to do it. I felt real freedom to serve and I loved it.

Do we have to serve God or do we get to serve God? The answer to this question has a tremendous impact on how we live our lives. For most of my life I had considered serving God and following his will as something that I had to do. This is the way of the Law, and it only leads to one of two outcomes: pride or despair. Neither one brings joy.

Pride comes to us when we think we're doing a pretty good job for God. We are prideful people if we believe that God is pleased with us for working hard and doing "good" things, and not pleased with people who don't work as hard as we do. Despair comes when we realize that we cannot love enough, serve enough or give enough to fulfill the Law. We hear the demand to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength—but we can't do it. So we give up, believing that God must be pretty disappointed with us.

But what if there was a different way? What if we get to serve God? What if the Law was fulfilled and the penalty for failure was abolished (Romans 3:19-24)? What if the reward motive was removed and we could serve God out of gratitude? This is the way of Jesus, the way of grace. Gratitude is a great motivator!

When I left the ministry I thought I'd be back in a year or two. But after a few years I realized that I did not miss the ministry at all. I began to pray that God would lead me and that if he wanted me to return to the ministry he would have to give me the desire. In the meantime, I was having a great time teaching and serving at the church where he had placed me. It's a funny thing to realize that God's will and our joy are not contradictions.

Fast-forward a few years and a few thousand miles south to Florida. I had a career, a new home, a new baby daughter and the same prayer: "God, if you want me to go back to seminary, please give me the desire and make it clear." I had prayed that prayer for about ten years. So when God renewed that desire in my heart, I recognized it immediately. I didn't have to go back to seminary and full-time ministry—I got to!

You don't have to serve God—you get to. When your work becomes a response to his grace, God adds meaning to whatever it is that you do. So whether you're writing a book, changing a diaper, fixing a car, delivering a sermon or even a newspaper, do it out of gratitude to Jesus. You will find freedom and joy in the process.

Rev. Ed Nugent is pastor at Word of Life LBC in LeSueur, MN.

Comments(1):

1. Great Job

   Great Job! A Wilmes

   Monday, June 20, 2011 A