Apply Directly to Your Life...

Speaking of mi hermano en Cristo Miguel (see my last post), he and his family had a challenging week. Miguel's wife had an allergic reaction to something she ate and her throat nearly closed up so she couldn't breathe. The kids called 911 and when the EMT's got there they gave her a epinephrine injection. Except that it was the wrong dose, and it opened her airway but also caused her to go into cardiac arrest, or as Miguel said, "flat line." She spent a couple days in the hospital recovering, then had to go back again due to severe headaches as a result of the overdose. In the meantime Miguel has been keeping a household of three girls (including a toddler) going, holding down a couple of jobs and filling in as pastor for a little Latino church here in town, the one I preached with him at a couple weeks ago (remember that, it will be important). In the middle of all this, Miguel has a fender-bender at the church while hurrying to go home and pick up his notes that he forgot. Aye-aye-aye!

So talking with Miguel tonight, he had a great perspective on all this. He pointed back to the message I had preached a couple weeks ago with him at the Pan de Vida church. My text - James 1:2-5. All about having the right perspective on the trials and tests and difficulties that God sovereignly causes and/or allows in our lives. A perspective that sees these trials as divinely appointed opportunities to trust Him and His grace and sustaining power. Tests to grow us in our faith and to mark us as approved by Him. Miguel's view was that God had me preach that message just because it was what he needed to hear, so that God could give him the opportunity - immediately - to apply it. And his response to all this? To quote: "The Lord is so good!"

Of course, his wife Elsa told me that I shouldn't preach again too soon, hard telling what might happen if I did.

Transitioning

Seems I'm doing some transitioning in teaching ministry over the next couple of weeks. I just last Sunday finished teaching my study of 1st John in Sunday school. I really loved that class, and that letter. Lots of challenging, black-and-white truth in there. And so "relevant" to today's church. Anyway, that's over and done with and I will be starting teaching a new class in two weeks. Doing a study on Biblical worldview, using material from Summit Ministries called Thinking Like A Christian. It's not the greatest curriculum, but it works well in a Sunday school setting, and doesn't go over too many people's heads. At least gives them a frame of reference for thinking Biblically. And boy, do we ever need that these days.

And my friend, or should I say mi hermano en Cristo Miguel is finishing teaching the study on the identity of a Christian that I have been helping him with, and will start teaching a theology class on the attributes of God for our Latino attenders. So I am going to be meeting with Miguel and continuing mentoring him through this study as well, while he translates it into Spanish and teaches it. I'm really loving this mentoring thing, I think I'm getting more out of it than he is as he gives me insight into the thinking and culture of the Latino people.

It's kind of funny, but as I'm sitting here writing this it occurs to me that I am more and more seeing my primary focus as being on ministry, specifically teaching and preaching and discipling. And less and less on my "day job", the one that pays the bills. I have a lot of things going on work-wise, with several projects I'm managing and the like. But God seems to be transitioning me (there's that word again) from gaining my identity and sense of purpose from my career to my ministry. This has been going on for a few years now, but seems to be accelerating lately. And I gotta say, I like it. I don't know what the future holds, but I could certainly see myself "retiring" from my job and taking on ministry on a full-time or near full-time basis sometime in the not too distant future. That would be a really big transition, but not if God was calling me to it. Guess I'll have to wait and see what He does. Isn't life with Christ the ultimate adventure?