2 Reflections on God's Calling (Part 2)

Reflection 2 - God is a Coach

            Going to school to be a pastor is an experience unlike any other. While my college years were some of the best years of my life, something strange happened near the end. As I progressed through my Senior year, I started to hear stories from professors about how they told God they would go anywhere but…(you fill in the blank). New York. California. The City. The country. The South. The mission fields. You get the idea. The punch line was that they ended up exactly where they hoped they wouldn’t.

            After a few dozen stories like that a strange idea took shape. I remember thinking that God would either call me to the one place in the world where I wouldn’t want to go, or he would keep from the places that I did want to be. I would catch myself absurdly trying to not think about the places I didn’t want to go. Because He just might send me straight there: “Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.” It was especially difficult because I was attending a school 2200 miles from my family. As time went, it got harder to keep a picture of a God that cared about me. At times I had to talk myself down from the ledge of seeing God as a cosmic jokester using my dreams and desires against me. Of course I never let people see that uncertainty, after all I was studying to be pastor! So I embraced the fatalistic humor and joked about pastoring the 1st Church of my Wor

st Nightmare.

            Then the interview process started. I revised my resume, organized it into a folder with examples of my skills, strengths, and connections. I put on my best suit, tie, and smile. I went into small rooms with other men in suits and answered their questions. A few weeks later, yet more interviews. I became a pro at telling the story of my “Call to Ministry.” Explaining my strengths, priorities, and goals. Describing my devotional life. Speculating on the best response to conflict. Outlining my action in a new church. The interviewers mostly came from places like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Maine. I came from Oregon. Those were some of the most conflicting months of my life. I wanted to be called to a church. I wanted some reward for the energy I put into my interviews. But I really didn’t want to end up on the East Coast. When graduated and the last interview was over and I still hadn’t received a call, I felt a mixture of fear, shame, and relief. I was confused.

           I've come to realize that there is beauty in that kind of confusion. Like dissonance in music or suspense in a story, it signals that something important is happening. Besides, everything beautiful comes out of pressure, heat, pain. From diamonds to infants. The Christian walk isn’t different. If you haven’t felt pressure, confusion, and frustration in your faith, you’re not even in the kiddy pool yet. You’re rolling in a puddle at the edge and you’re missing out. Missing out on a life of risk and danger. A place where that in-over-your-head feeling would drive you crazy, but you know that you're only here because God brought you here and has His reasons. So you learn to live in over your head, because you never really are when He's around.

            I’m in Idaho now, the Ministry Lead at a Radio Station. The story of how I got this job is one for another post, but I will say it’s the most challenging experience of my life. There are days when I feel no hope that this thing will work. When I feel like I’m a huge poser and they’re gonna figure it out any day now. Then God does things. Things like letting me talk to a woman who chose not to end her life because of the ministry I’m a part of. He lets me pray with depressed people and talk to people mourning the loss of their baby. Then He stops me and tells me to look back and when I do and I’m amazed at where we’ve come.

           See, I’ve learned that God isn’t a jokester. He’s a coach. Him calling me isn't to prove his authority, but to grow my faith. Sometimes its terrifying, shameful, and hard. But the pressure is not meaningless. Like any coach He guides, leads, and always has my best interest at heart, but sometimes I need Him to make me drop and give Him 20. I need Him to make it tough! I need Him to make it real.