Discover Your Ministry! (Pt 1)

Romans 12:1-8

Being involved in ministry is a fulfillment of Ephesians 2:8-10, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” Ministry is anytime you work unto the Lord. It is an outward expression of God’s grace at work through you. I would argue that it’s impossible to do ministry apart from Christ or for any motive other than Christ. It may be called a ministry, but it’s not! Just like we may not call it ministry when you go about your day, doing whatever it is you do unto the Lord, but it is!

Every single person, called by God and chosen to receive saving faith by grace, is called to live by the anointing of the Holy Spirit as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as taught by 2 Corinthians 5:17-20:

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

Ministry is not for an exclusive group, such as pastors and missionaries, and, if we were to define ministry as something for an “exclusive group” of people, then the simple fact that you are a Christian puts you in that exclusive group. With that said, how do you discover your ministry? That is a similar question to the philosophical one, “Why do I exist?” or “What on earth did God put me on this planet to do?” Discovering your ministry helps you find your place in the body of Christ because we are called to be members of the one body of Christ. According to Ephesians 4:11-16, the body of Christ is built up when each of us uniquely finds our ministry:

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

You were chosen by God and called to be a member of the body of Christ on purpose! That purpose is to be build the body of Christ because we are the closest thing to the incarnation the world has after Jesus’ ascended to the right hand of the Father. If people are going to see Jesus, it’s through the church, the people of God who bear His image and manifest His fruit! Discovering that purpose invites you to take a 5-step process of discovering your ministry from Romans 12:1-8:

Step 1: Dedicate your life to God!

^“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship” (Romans 12:1).

Step 2: Eliminate competing distractions!

^“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

These first two steps are summarized with a military image from 2 Timothy 2:4, “No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.” The focus of a Christian soldier is what it means to the fear the Lord, or to “seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33).

Step 3: Find your identity in God!

^“For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith” (Romans 12:3).

Step 4: Gather with the Body of Christ as a healthy, functioning member!

^“For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Romans 12:4-5).

Step 5: Live a life of wholehearted devotion!        

^“Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith; if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness” (Romans 12:6-8).

This is the biblical, five-step process to discover your ministry, but there is a significant issue that I must help you with if this is going to be of practical assistance to us as the Great Community of God! Jesus taught in Matthew 7:24-26:

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”

You must now go and do what you have learned! And not just once and done, but every day of your life. We work unto the Lord six days per week, and we dedicate one full day per week to cease from our unfinished works to rest in His finished work – to delight in God!

Discovering your life of ministry is truly about living a life of devotion to the beliefs and values you hold true in your heart; it’s about being a person of integrity. You must figure out how to align your heart and mind so that you speak and act in agreement with who you say you are in Christ. A life of devotion must include a devotional life because it is in our time with God that we hear from Him and dedicate our day to walking in the Way with Him. When done properly, your devotional life fuels your life of devotion, just like your Christian discipleship fuels our community life as the Great Community. What we do personally informs what we do corporately, and what we do together gives direction and boundary to what you do alone. This is how God designed it: for us to be totally dependent on Jesus, who is the head, and mutually dependent on one another, the unique members of His body.

Resources:

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