My Call to Ministry

So as most of you know, in 13 days from today (August 22, 2012) I will be leaving for Uganda for 3 months. I'm so excited to see what the Lord has planned for me! But over the past few days I have really been reflecting on how I have come to this point. Over the next couple of days I will be sharing that with all of you.

Before I really began following Jesus, I was really struggling. I was doing things that I shouldn't have been for almost 3 years. I remember many times throughout this 3 year period thinking that there is no way that God could exist. I don't exactly know why, but I did. Needless to say, I was giving in to Satan's tricks. At the very end of this three year span I remember thinking, "I've had enough of this. There has to be more to life." That was really when I began to turn my life around.

That was in November of 2010. In January of 2011 one of my best friends, Michael Hutson, invited me to a small group that his youth group did every Sunday night at a different person's house. I just went on and told him that I would come. So I went and the leaders challenged us to have a verse ready to talk about for the next week. I went home and opened up my Bible (for the first time in years) to Ephesians 4:1, which I had never read before. It says, "As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." So the next week came around and I shared that with everyone. I remember thinking that I had no idea what my calling was, and we were about to go to college. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. So the leaders of the small group really encouraged me to pray about it. One of my favorite verses that I began to pray was Psalm 25:4-5 and it says, "Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long." So I began praying about what God wanted me to do with my life.

It had gotten to be February of 2011, and Lent was fast approaching so I was deciding what to give up and what to take on. Well the thing I decided to take on was reading the whole Bible in chronological order. So I started at the end of February and in chronological order the Bible goes from Genesis 1-11 to the whole book of Job, then back to Genesis 12. So I had read up to Genesis 12 by the time that Spring Break of my junior year had come along. About halfway through the week I was at my grandparent's house doing a little turkey hunting. Right after we had gotten home from the morning hunt I decided to go upstairs and read a little bit. So I picked up the Bible, opened to Genesis 12, and this is what I read:
"The Lord had said to Abram, 'Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you'" (Genesis 12:1-3).

As soon as I got done reading that, for some reason I sat up and looked straight ahead. Then a thought ran through my mind: "I can't believe people haven't heard about this! I have to go tell someone!" And I will never forget what I thought after that. I sat there and thought that was the weirdest thing ever, that I was going to keep that to myself, and no one was ever going to know about it. Then I went downstairs and tried to get my mind off of it. Of course now I look back and want to go to myself and yell in my face, "IT WAS GOD YOU IDIOT!" But that is impossible so I have to live with it.

I stuck that memory in the back of my head until the first weekend of April. I signed up for a retreat with a study for my church called Man2Man. I didn't think much of it. One of my best friends, Christopher Slagley, told me to sign up for it, so I did just thinking I would at least have a good time. Well the theme for the weekend was "All In." That saying had gotten very popular around Auburn considering that the team won a national championship that year and pretty much trademarked that saying. But anyways, I will never forget on that first night at the retreat, a man was speaking and he said, "How has God called you to be all in?" And that question really hit me hard. I wouldn't realize how hard until the next day though.

The next day a different guy was speaking and for like 2 hours he talked about Matthew 16:24-25, which is one of my favorite verses today. It says, "Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." After we spent a good long time talking about that verse, I realized that that moment almost a month earlier was a call to ministry.

So of course, I felt the call to ministry so I automatically thought that I was going to be a preacher. But little did I know, that God wasn't done telling me what He wanted me to do, but I will get more into that tomorrow.