There are many levels of pleasure in thinking back over 150 years of the life of Bethlehem. The pleasure of actually looking at the pictures of 20 of the 23 charter members in 1871, and discovering that there were 14 women and 9 men in that first membership. And that on June 24, they held their first service at the home of Eric and Anna Hernland on Hennepin Island.

The pleasure of seeing among those old photographs the picture of August Malmston, the grandfather of one of our living members, Marlys Arenson.

The pleasure of learning that there were 61,000 Swedish immigrants in this 14-year-old state of Minnesota in 1871. And these 61,000 immigrants were served by 20 Swedish-speaking churches in outstate Minnesota, but by only one Swedish-speaking church in Minneapolis — namely, Augustana Lutheran, whose old building, interestingly, one block from the downtown campus, is now occupied by a Bethlehem church plant — Hope Church.

The pleasure of discovering that our first pastor John Ring had been imprisoned in the 1860s in Sweden because of his Baptist faith, and that he had to step away from that first pastorate of Bethlehem after only a year because of poor health.

The pleasure of seeing a picture of our first building completed in 1874 with the hitching posts for the horses clearly visible along the dirt street.

The painful pleasure of seeing the picture of the building destroyed by fire in 1885 and reading that pastor Frank Peterson’s text that next Sunday was Isaiah 64:11, “Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins.”

The pleasure of thinking that the church has passed from its origins of horse and buggy to the space-age. It has experienced the arrival in Minnesota of the telephone in 1880; electric streetcars in 1890; automobiles in 1902; a first radio station in 1921; 36 days in a row below zero in 1936; and 6,225 Minnesotan lives lost in World War II that ended in 1945 (the same year the church changed its name from First Swedish Baptist to Bethlehem Baptist); the first TV station in 1948; the first church computer at Bethlehem in 198 — and the emergence today of perhaps more smartphone Bibles than print Bibles in our worship services.

And let’s not pass by too quickly the pleasure of pondering that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Let it sink in that the Minnesota that we live in today is more different from the Minnesota of 1871 than the Minnesota of 1871 was different from the days when Jesus walked this earth. It is vastly more different.

“Christ has never ceased, through all of this change, to be infinitely relevant for every generation.”

Is it not amazing, therefore, that this church has been alive and flourishing under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and in allegiance to the word of God through a century and a half of the greatest changes that the world has ever seen? Is it not amazing that this glorious Jesus Christ — the creator of the universe, the upholder of all things by the word of his power, the suffering savior giving his life as a ransom for many, the risen Christ sitting at the right hand of God, the head of the church and lover of his people — this Christ has never ceased, through all of this change, to be infinitely relevant for every generation through these changing times. Seeing that, savoring that, is a great pleasure.

How Does a Church Endure?

How does that happen? None of the people who made up Bethlehem Baptist Church in 1871 are part of this church today. And yet it is the same church. How does that happen?

It happens because even though the individual members of the living organism called Bethlehem come and go, the enduring life of that organism does not consist in any one member, or group of members. Rather it consists in the life of the living Head of the church, Jesus Christ, who calls shepherds and sheep in every generation to himself and to this organism.

It consists in the power of the Holy Spirit moving among the people bearing his fruit. It consists in the reality of faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It consists in the worship of God the Father and prayer to him in Jesus’s name. It consists in a consistent mission to reach lost people with the good news of Jesus. It consists in the biblical structure of leadership and accountability formed by the word of God.

Individual members come and go, but these realities that make up the organism called Bethlehem do not come and go. They remain.

God Sustains Churches

Why do they remain? Or, more urgently, will they remain?

But let’s make it more personal, as we try to answer this question. Not only, Will faith remain in the church? Will the church be the church? But also, Will we remain in faith? Will we be Christian?

If saving faith remains in Bethlehem, and she remains a church, and if you remain in faith, and remain a Christian, the ultimate reason will be the same in both cases.

We just sang the reason:

His oath, His covenant, His blood     Support me in the ‘whelming flood;When all around my soul gives way,     He then is all my hope and stay.

The new covenant, the oath it contains, and the blood that bought it. This is our hope and stay. God’s people will stand, we will stay, because of the blood-bought covenant between God and his people.

“If Bethlehem is faithful for another 25 years, it will be because God did not let her turn from him.”

What covenant? Here’s what Jesus said at the Last Supper: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). This means that the terms promised in the new covenant, I will secure for you, my people, by shedding my blood tomorrow morning. So, if you belong to Christ, this new covenant is yours. Its terms apply to you. Now, what are the terms of this new covenant that answer the question: If Bethlehem is here for its 175th anniversary, and if you are a Christian in 25 years, what will be the decisive reason?

New Covenant Pleasures

One of the most beautiful and clear expressions of the terms of the new covenant is found in Jeremiah 32:40–41,

I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.

Here are five more pleasures to revel in as we look back over 150 years and see why it is that Bethlehem is still here, and why it is that we are still believing, and why it is that we will keep on believing until Jesus comes or until he calls.

Eternal Covenant

>I will make with them an everlasting covenant. (Jeremiah 32:40)

A covenant is a set of promises and obligations between two parties.

Here God’s not saying, “I made with you a covenant when I brought you out of Egypt, and you broke it, and now you are under judgment in exile.” That’s true. That’s why there has to be a new covenant. A covenant that is not going to be broken by either side.

Therefore, it will last forever. It will be an everlasting covenant because both sides of the covenant-keeping are secured by the blood of Jesus. Hebrews 13:20 refers to the “blood of the eternal covenant.” In Christ, we are a people with whom God has made an eternal covenant. Now, what does it guarantee by the blood of Jesus?

Unremitting Grace

I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. (Jeremiah 32:40)

This is exactly what the apostle Paul said God secured by the giving of his Son for his people. He said it in Romans 8:32, which was a restatement of Romans 8:28.

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose [his covenant purpose never to turn away from doing us good]. (Romans 8:28)

“Every hard thing that God brings into our lives is for our ultimate good. It is never destructive for the children of God.”

“He will work everything for our good” is the Romans 8:28 way of saying Jeremiah 32:40, “I will not turn away from doing good to them.” There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There is no wrath. There is only mercy. Only grace.

Every hardship that God brings into our lives is for our ultimate good. It is never destructive for the children of God. To take you back to 1995, there was a little four-line rhyme that for several years the members of the church would quote to each other to explain this understanding of God’s unremitting, sometimes difficult sovereign grace in our lives:

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,     Nor flight from all distress,But this, the grace that orders our trouble and pain,     And then in the darkness is there to sustain.

New Heart

I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts. (Jeremiah 32:40)

This is what I meant when I said that the blood of Jesus secures both sides of the covenant-keeping — God’s side to be faithful and our side to fear the Lord. The fear of the Lord stands for the whole humble, believing, reverent response to God and his promises.

What God is saying here is that he sovereignly takes the initiative to see to it that the hearts of those whom he has chosen are humble, believing, reverent hearts. We don’t first fear God and then get chosen by God because we met the qualification. He chooses us first and then puts the fear of him in our hearts.

Here’s how God says it in Ezekiel 11:19: “I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.”

That is how you were saved, Christian. You know that! This is what we call amazing grace. Amazing mercy: “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4–5). We were dead. And God made us alive. He took out the proud heart and put in the fear of the Lord. Never cease to be amazed that you are a Christian.

The world today needs Christians whose lives have the aroma of humble amazement that they are saved.

Blood-Bought Perseverance

I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. (Jeremiah 32:40)

There it is. There is the answer to our question, Why has Bethlehem existed in faithfulness for 150 years? Why are you still a Christian? What will be the decisive explanation if Bethlehem is flourishing at her 175th anniversary? What will be the decisive explanation if you are still a Christian 25 years from now?

And the answer is this: “I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.” God keeps those whom he calls.

And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. (Romans 8:30)

He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. (1 Thessalonians 5:24)

He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6)

This is the amazing, blood-bought new covenant.

Why will you wake up a Christian tomorrow morning? Because by his blood Jesus bought this covenant-keeping promise for you: God will not let you turn from him. If Bethlehem is faithful for another 25 years, it will be because God did not let her turn from him. We are, as individuals and as a church, finally dependent on this promise in Jeremiah 32:40, “I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.”

God Rejoices in Our Good

I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul. (Jeremiah 32:41)

If you ever thought for a moment that God was begrudging in doing you good, let yourself be set free from that error! We have a happy God. And one thing that makes him happy is doing good to his people with all his heart and with all his soul.

This is absolutely breathtaking. “I will rejoice in doing them good . . . with all my heart and all my soul.”

Celebrating What Is to Come

As I close, I’m going to put on my old pastor’s hat that I wore for 33 years and celebrate three things.

First, without in any way detracting from the great work of God in the last eight years, I celebrate the call of Kenny Stokes as my pastor downtown. And I am thrilled with the ministry of Steven Lee at the north campus and of David Zuleger at the south campus. What a great leadership God has raised up for us.

I want you to know that I worshiped with great joy under the ministry of Jason Meyer for eight years, and I expect to worship with equally great joy under the ministry of Kenny Stokes. I was Kenny’s lead pastor for 15 years, and now I am privileged to have him as mine. This too is a great pleasure.

Second, even though there is a nostalgic downside to think of Bethlehem soon becoming three churches instead of one church, the decision of the elders to move in this direction is, in my judgment, strategic and wise.

From the beginning, I always thought this would be a good outcome to the multi-campus strategy: three strong centers of Reformed Christian Hedonism along the 40 mile stretch of I-35 from Mounds View to Lakeville. I think of it as robust church planting with the gestation periods of 19 and 15 years. Not to mention all the other churches that have been and will be planted from these three locations. This too is a great pleasure.

Finally, when I was pastor, for the last couple decades of that ministry, we would come to this point in the year almost always hundreds of thousands of dollars behind budget. I felt a special responsibility to remind the people that nothing is too hard for God.

He holds the world in existence. He stops the sun in the sky. He divides seas. He feeds five thousand with a few fish and loaves. He raises the dead. He puts gold coins in mouths of fish. Nothing — nothing is too hard for God. Let’s trust him with our lives and give to his cause like he is our Treasure. God met every need for 33 years — for 150 years. Watching him do this has been a great pleasure.

We are going to sing a signature song of Bethlehem. One of the greatest songs of “sorrowful yet always rejoicing.” And when we get to that final verse and crescendo into the Lord’s coming, remember, dear child of God, whether you see the Lord on the clouds, or hear his call in death, you’re going to make it home. He will not turn away from doing good to you. He will put the fear of the Lord in your heart, so that you will not turn from him.

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight     The clouds be rolled back as a scroll.
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend.
     Even so, it is well with my soul!

On the night he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus wanted to give his people a sign of his covenant love. As God had once assured Noah with a rainbow, and lifted Abraham’s eyes to the stars, and sanctified the Sabbath for Israel, so now Jesus wanted to give his disciples, and us, some tangible token of his promises, some visible seal of his faithfulness. And so, he broke a loaf of bread, and he poured a cup of wine.

Bread and wine, loaf and cup: in these two ordinary elements, our crucified, risen, and reigning Lord declares to us his victories. He tells us who we are. And he gives us a taste of his coming kingdom, when once again he will preside over a supper, this time with no coming sorrow.

And yet, if we are going to receive Christ’s covenant love in this meal, and not just bread and wine — or crackers and juice, as the case may be — we need the meaning of the elements clear in our minds. As John Calvin writes, “Assuredly this is the chiefest thing in all sacraments, that the word of God may appear engraven there, and that the clear voice may sound.”

What word, then, has Jesus engraved upon the bread and the cup? What voice sounds forth from the Supper?

Bread and Wine

When Jesus took up the bread and the cup of the Last Supper, he was handling objects thick with associations from Israel’s past. Bread and wine appear regularly, together and apart, throughout the Old Testament and Jesus’s own ministry. Here was bread long baked, and wine well aged.

At the most basic level, bread and wine sustained the life of God’s people (Genesis 27:28; Leviticus 26:26). Both were staples of Israel’s diet — bread because of the simplicity and reliability of grain, and wine because water could be so scarce in the ancient Near East.

For that reason, bread and wine were also valuable gifts of friendship and hospitality, first from God to man (Psalm 104:15), and then from man to his neighbor (Genesis 14:18; Ruth 2:14).

In similar fashion, bread and wine reflected the blessings and curses of God’s covenant with Israel. When the nation walked closely with their God, then they ate bread and drank wine in abundance (Deuteronomy 7:13); when they strayed after other gods, famine struck their fields and vineyards (Hosea 2:9).

Finally, bread and wine could serve as symbols of Israel’s eschatological hope, when God would swallow death and spread a feast for all peoples (Isaiah 25:6–8; 55:1–2). “Behold, the days are coming,” God says through Amos,

When the plowman shall overtake the reaper     and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed;the mountains shall drip sweet wine,     and all the hills shall flow with it. (Amos 9:13; see also Jeremiah 31:12)

“Life sustainer, gift giver, covenant maker, eschaton bringer, Jesus is Israel’s God made flesh.”

More associations could be mentioned, but these suffice to give some sense of the broad background to Jesus’s own uses of bread and wine. It is no accident that, in his ministry, Jesus multiplies both (John 2:1–11; 6:1–14), likens himself to both (John 6:35; 15:1), consecrates both to serve as his church’s covenant meal (Luke 22:14–20), and promises both in the age to come (Luke 22:18; Revelation 2:17). Life sustainer, gift giver, covenant maker, eschaton bringer, Jesus is Israel’s God made flesh.

And yet, we can get more specific. When Jesus took the bread and the cup, he took up not only the broad tapestry of Old Testament history and revelation, but also a few particular threads, now amplified and fulfilled in him.

Bread of the Passover

Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper on a day already charged with tremendous significance: the Passover (Luke 22:11). For centuries, the families of Israel had gathered on Passover to eat the meat of a slaughtered lamb, along with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, and to relive the night when the sacrificial blood shielded them from God’s wrath (Exodus 12:7–13, 42). God had swept his arm through Pharaoh’s land, judging his enemies and rescuing his people through a marvelous exodus deliverance. Annually, then, Israel was to remember that though they once were slaves, they now were God’s redeemed.

Yet on this Passover, as Jesus gathers with his disciples in the upper room, he looks not to the past, but to the present; he directs their gaze not upon the lamb, but upon himself. Taking up the unleavened bread, he gives thanks, breaks it, and says, “This is my body, which is given for you” (Luke 22:19).

By mapping his Supper onto the Passover, Jesus does something remarkable: he gives his disciples familiar categories for understanding his covenant meal, even as he expands those categories far beyond their hopes. Like the Passover meal, the Lord’s Supper recalls a past deliverance from slavery and declares those who eat to be God’s redeemed people. Unlike the Passover, however, the lamb of the Supper is the Lord himself, whose blood protects us not only for a night, but for eternity (Hebrews 9:12). The death he dies is once for all — unrepeated and unrepeatable (Hebrews 9:26). And the exodus redemption he accomplishes rescues us not from Pharaoh, but from sin and death and hell (Colossians 1:13–14).

Whenever God’s people eat the bread, then, we say with Paul, “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7), and we celebrate a festival of God’s favor that will never, ever end (1 Corinthians 5:8).

Cup of the Covenant

The cup of the Lord’s Supper, like the bread, has resonances with the Passover meal, but it also takes us to another scene shortly after. After Israel left Egypt, passed through the Red Sea, and heard God’s law at Sinai, Moses sprinkled them with sacrificial blood (Exodus 24:8). They were now God’s people by covenant, and God himself was their God (Exodus 6:7).

Jesus, recalling this covenant moment, passes the blood-red wine to his disciples and says, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). Here again, Jesus explains the Lord’s Supper with familiar categories — and here again, he wondrously expands them. For his blood and covenant are far, far better.

In the cup, we receive not the blood of goats and calves, “which can never take away sins” (Hebrews 10:11), but “the precious blood of Christ” himself (1 Peter 1:19). Jesus’s blood not only purifies the flesh but cleanses the conscience (Hebrews 9:14), not only covers sin for a time but forgives it forever (Ephesians 1:7; 1 John 1:7). His blood “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24), for it pleads not for vengeance, but for mercy. With his blood, Jesus secured the eternal for his people: an “eternal redemption” yielding an “eternal inheritance” bound within an “eternal covenant” (Hebrews 9:12, 16; 13:20).

Or, as Jesus puts it, alluding to Jeremiah, his blood purchases a “new covenant” (Luke 22:20; Jeremiah 31:31) — and, indeed, a “better” one, “since it is enacted on better promises” (Hebrews 8:6). Under the new covenant, God writes his law not on stone but on hearts, he is known by both greatest and least, and he pledges a covenantal forgetfulness as glorious as it is divine: “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:33–34).

“Jesus, our most worthy Lord, snatched the cup of judgment from our lips and exchanged it with his own cup of favor.”

And all because Jesus, our most worthy Lord, snatched the cup of judgment from our lips and exchanged it with his own cup of favor. On the cross, he drank “from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath,” the dreadful “cup of staggering” (Isaiah 51:17, 22), so that, in our hands, it might become “the cup of blessing” (1 Corinthians 10:16). And oh how it overflows (Psalm 23:5).

Our Portion and Cup

Bread and wine, loaf and cup: they could not look more ordinary, but they could not contain more glory. Small enough to fit in the palm, they are big enough to hold the world. We eat and drink them in a moment, but this moment wraps both past and future in its grasp (1 Corinthians 11:26).

And what word do we find engraved on these elements? What voice sounds forth from this Supper? In summary, this: in Jesus Christ, our Bread of Life and true Grapevine, God has shielded us from his wrath, delivered us from sin and Satan, and bound us to himself in a covenant that can never be broken.

Take, then, and eat. Take and drink. And taste the covenant love of Christ.

Audio Transcript

How will I find my ministry calling? Will I find it internally, like some impulse that will lead me to start a new thing? Or will my ministry calling come from the outside? Will it come from others telling me where I’m needed? This is a great question, and it comes in today from a listener named Caleb.

Caleb references a conference you preached at years back, Pastor John. Here’s his email: “Hello, Pastor John! At a conference, now many years ago, you went to Colossians 4:17 to argue that God gives ministries to his children. We don’t stumble upon our ministry; instead, he decisively ‘throws’ us into them, so to speak. Any chance you’d be willing to expand on how this works, and how it has worked for you in church and parachurch contexts? Thank you!”

First, let me share several passages of Scripture that caused me to say that we are not the decisive cause of being in any particular ministry — God is. And then I’ll step back and ask how that divine work is experienced in our minds and in our hearts so that we can make it more practical for people as they find their way into ministry and church or parachurch.

God Grants the Ministry

First, Paul says to the elders who are gathered in Acts 20:28, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you [literally, “set you” or “put you” — etheto in Greek] overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” God put those elders there as elders. They did not put themselves there — God did, decisively.

“We are not the decisive cause of being in any particular ministry — God is.”

Second, Ephesians 4:11–12. Paul says that Christ “gave [to the church] the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” These ministers of the church are the gift of the risen Christ to his body. They are where they are as a gift of Christ.

Third, in Matthew 9:37–38, Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” And the word for “send out” is ekballō, “throw out.” He threw them into ministry. “Send out, throw, the laborers into the harvest.” So when the Lord answers this prayer, he does the decisive work and makes sure that the workers are where he wants them to be.

Fourth, Romans 10:13–15:

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

Now, it’s possible for a rogue preacher to preach without being sent by a church or a mission agency. I don’t think that’s what Paul is talking about here. I think Paul is saying that nobody can preach authentically, nobody can preach with integrity for God, with God’s authority, unless he is sent by God. If anyone is preaching the gospel the way he ought as a faithful spokesman of God, he has been sent by God, not by himself. God is the decisive actor in putting them in that gospel-preaching ministry.

Fifth, Luke 12:41. Jesus had just told a parable about being ready for the second coming, and Peter says, “Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for all?” And Jesus answers like this: “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom his master will set [or appoint] over his household, to give them their portion of food at the proper time?” So when Jesus thinks of pastors and teachers of his people, he thinks of them as stewards put over a household. He has appointed them. They are not there randomly. He has set them there, and they are to feed and take care of his house.

Sixth (and this is the last that I’m going to mention), there’s the text that Caleb referred to — namely, Colossians 4:17: “And say to Archippus, ‘See that you fulfill the ministry that you received in the Lord.’” So Archippus did not put himself in his ministry. He received the ministry from the Lord.

How We Experience God’s Calling

Now, those six passages are the reason that Caleb is right when he quotes me as saying, “We don’t stumble upon our ministries; instead, God decisively throws us into them.” But now, in practice — in the church, in parachurch ministries, wherever — we have to ask the question, How does God work inside of us, inside of people (in their mind, in their heart), so that they find themselves in the ministry where he’s putting them?

What’s the conscious experience of God’s work of guidance, of leading, in getting us to where he wants us to be? And I’ll mention just four things briefly that are typically the way God does it. And I say typically because he’s God and he can make exceptions to these.

Rising Desire in the Heart

First, there is ordinarily the rising in our hearts of a relentless and abiding desire for the work. Paul says in 1 Timothy 3:1, “If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.” That certainly was true for me. Wow. In the two stages of my calling into the ministry, God exploded in the fall of 1966 when I was 20 years old with a relentless and abiding desire for the ministry of the word. And then he did the same thing in 1979, the fall of ’79, with a relentless and abiding desire for the proclamation of the word in the pastoral role. These desires were not flashes in the pan; they were deep and unshakable, and they overcame significant obstacles.

Fitness for the Ministry

Second, there is ordinarily a God-given fitness or giftedness for the ministry, which is shown both in a cluster of abilities that we have and in the fruit of people actually being helped spiritually by the use of those abilities — and all of that confirmed, not just by our own individual selves, but rather by the community of believers, and especially the most mature and discerning believers.

“There is ordinarily the rising in our hearts of a relentless and abiding desire for the work.”

Paul didn’t just say to the elder, “If you desire it, you’ve got it.” He gave a long list of qualifications (1 Timothy 3:1–7). So the person moves into a ministry role (1) because of a perceived set of abilities, and (2) because of some manifest fruit in people that are really being spiritually helped by those abilities, and then (3) through the mature brothers and sisters recognizing and confirming that fruit and giftedness.

Specific Encouragement

Third, there’s often a specific encouragement from other people that you should do this particular ministry. Paul said to Timothy, “I want you to go with me” (see Acts 16:3). That’s pretty direct. This happens very often. Someone says to another person, “I really think you should do this.” And it proves to be a providence from the Lord, an encouragement that gets them over the hump of hesitation.

Confidence in God’s Favor

And then finally, number four, there’s a correlation between our most consecrated, spiritually intense, wholly submitted moments on the one hand, and the sense of God’s favor and guidance for the ministry in those very moments on the other hand. In other words, when we feel most confident in God’s favor and guidance, those are the moments when we are least worldly, least unspiritual, least indifferent.

There’s a correlation between those seasons of life — when God seems to blow the cobwebs of worldliness and selfishness and greed and pride out of our heart — and it’s in those moments when we sense the leading toward this ministry most keenly and surely. God confirms them not in the carnal, selfish moments, but in the humble, brokenhearted, sacrificial, loving moments.

So, in summary, then, there are practical, relational, subjective experiences that move us toward ministry. But in the end, it is the hidden hand of God’s gracious providence that puts us, throws us, where he wants us to be.