Sorting Through My Vocation

I am currently in a period of restructuring in my life. I approach school with questions already on the table – questions that are vital for me to have answered. I wouldn’t have had that sort of desperation had I gone to seminary straight out of college. I am also able to come with a greater measure of humility than I might have had before the church closed. I am more open to receive than when I “had all the answers.”

God has strengthened my call to vocational ministry. I was leaning toward academics with a view to become a professor until I started on this project. As I examined all the major events of my life, I saw that over half of them point toward vocational ministry but only one or two point toward professional academics. I have learned that I do not want to be in a ministry role where the goal is building a large church. I would like to change the world through ideas, especially writing.

On the day I repented for getting drunk, I received a prophecy from one of the elders in the church:

The Lord says, I am laying a deep, deep foundation in you, and I am driving pylons and I am laying things down deep to the bedrock of the earth in your heart. And there shall come a day when the building will be built upon these foundations. And the building will rise even to the height that
the foundations go deep. For I don’t intend to build on you just a small structure, I don’t intend to build on you just a little thing that requires very little foundation. But I require you to have deep foundations to the very bedrock of truth. And I require your deep foundations to the very bedrocks of true character. For I will build upon you structure. And I will build upon you a massive building, a massive edifice of your life for My glory, says God.

I asked the Lord in prayer, “Why are you going back to the foundations after you have already started building?” In one of those flashes of insight that come through prayer, I felt like the Lord responded, “I haven’t started building on you yet.”

I find that the foundations go much deeper than I expected. I find myself crying out to God for new keys that will unlock the prison doors in the lives of people.