All or nothing

It is a moment I will never forget. Five days earlier. someone I never met had confronted me with an issue that had been unresolved in my life for twenty-seven years. When I was fourteen years old, I had promised God to do what God asked of me. I knew God was asking something of me but when you are a female in the Southern Baptist tradition, you have a limited understanding of just what that means. God never answered my pressing questions as I finished high school, college, or graduate school. God never spoke up when I moved to Houston to take a job in banking, when I got married or had children. Now here I was, a divorced, single mother with three children starting over and God picks now to tell me what I was called to do. It was an all or nothing proposition and in that moment I committed my all.

You do not fully understand the sacrifice it will require. You do not comprehend how often your heart will be broken or how often you will be misunderstood. You cannot know how you will be brought to your knees or lifted up beyond expectations. The clearer your call becomes the more you are able to accept it all as being part of something far greater than you.

This is my eleventh year in pastoral ministry. I adore the people I serve - they are human just like me. They are a mixed of beauty and pain. They are capable of greatness and pettiness. I stand before them each week wondering how I can make them understand one great truth - you cannot serve yourself and serve God. They say God is important. They claim that their faith is a priority but it isn't. It is a convenience - there when they need it and nothing else more important is taking its place.

At some point, you must make a choice and deferring that choice is a choice as well. If you want a different life, you must make a different choice.