When I posted yesterday I wrote the following about evangelizing.
I am always thrilled and amazed that Pastors keep calling and asking us into their churches to minister to their people. What an awesome privilege to preach the Word of God. It is also a privilege and honor to be entrusted with the responsibility of ministering in another man's pulpit.
That paragraph set me to thinking. We really do love what we do. I love to preach the Word of God. We love to sing. We love to minister the love of God to people exactly where they are with the message of the Gospel. I love to share good news with folks that are constantly bombarded with bad news.
They say if you love what you do then you never really work a day in your life. I do not know who "they" are and "they" might have been making a slight exaggeration but I get the point.
I spent quite a few years in secular employment.
I have worked in various forms of construction both commercial and residential.
I have worked in two different GM factories for a total of 8 years. In one GM factory I worked the majority of the time as a job setter and operator on high speed punch presses.
In the second GM factory I worked on various assembly lines where we made Chevy Blazers, GMC Envoys and Oldsmobile Bravadas. Most of my years there were spent in tire and wheel, final assembly and the interior trim department.
I also worked at another small factory, tried my had at selling insurance (Became totally convinced I am NOT a salesman), as a trim carpenter and one of my favorite jobs but also lowest paying jobs was working at Kmart.
Through most of those years I also worked on the side doing residential electric work and also other construction.
My high school job was in the kitchen of a nursing home. The first few months of married life I was a laborer for a carpet layer and an electrical contractor before I was hired at GM.
I mostly enjoyed going to work. I was thankful for every day I had a place to go and do something that somebody felt was worth paying me to do. We have had some thin times when jobs were hard to find and I was especially thankful to be working no matter how low the pay was.
Many of those years I worked a lot of hours each week. Most of the time I was working two jobs or working one job and doing side work as well. For one thing, we needed the money to pay the bills and keep our family afloat. In addition to that, it was always satisfying to feel tired at the end of a long day or at the end of an 80 hour week and know that I had accomplished something useful AND I was providing for my family too.
But in the end, it was just work. These were just jobs. They provided means for us to live and to give. I was thankful to God for every day I could work. Kelly Jo and I knelt down at the couch many times early in the morning and thanked God for a job to go to while asking him to help me with specific challenges I was facing on the job at the time. But they were just jobs, a means to an end.
When the call came from Wichita asking me to leave GM and Pastor a church I thought it over about two minutes. In some ways it was the hardest decision I had ever made but I KNEW I must go. I would not have went without the Lord's direction but I sensed His direction from that first moment.
I gave that wonderful little church my very best. I may not have been a great Pastor, I will leave that determination to somebody else, but I was the very best Pastor I could be. I loved it and lived it from day one.
When the door opened for us to enter evangelism nearly four years later in January 2003, we gave that all we had too. For over twelve years we have had the awesome privilege to preach revivals all over the USA and in other countries. Pastors have invited us to their churches and allowed us the opportunity to sing and preach the everlasting Gospel to their people. We count that an amazing honor.
God has blessed us to work with some of the best men in the world. We have preached for some of the best Pastors in the world and worked right along side awesome Missionaries and tremendous Evangelists. God has done our family a great kindness by surrounding us with great Godly men.
We have watched God save people right out of their sin, sanctify, fill with the Holy Ghost, heal and encourage. We have witnessed as He changed lives, restored marriages, renewed relationships, brought children back home and revitalized congregations.
The Lord has allowed us to be a part in the lives of many wonderful saints of God. We have married them, dedicated their babies and walked beside them as they laid their loved ones in the ground. We have cried with them at the hospital, prayed them through at the jail house and shouted the victory with them in the church house.
Wow! What a marvelous, wonderful, phenomenal vocation!
Is evangelism work? Is what we do tiring? Is it hard?
Physically, these twelve plus years have been the hardest in my life. But you know what "they" say. No, not "they", I say, IF you love what you do then you never really work a day in your life.
We really love what God has given us to do that much. May He help us to do it faithfully and to do it well.
Next week I may write a post about my vision and approach to evangelism. Have a great weekend.
Davy
