“My Call as a Pastor – A View from the Wilderness”
“My Call as a Pastor – A View from the Wilderness”
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There is no doubt that the call of God on my life is for me to be completely sold out to the ministry of the Gospel. Admittedly, over the years, I have tried to run from this call, only to find that God has many more big fish in the sea that He calls upon (the one that swallowed Noah was only a prototype…God has mass produced them and they are all over the world now!) to bring His servants back to His reality from which they are running. I have come to the place where, instead of complaining about the burden of the church, I am yearning to feel it once again. It’s one of those things that even Hallmark puts into their greeting cards, “You don’t realize what you have until it’s gone.” To be sure, the call of God is still as strong in me as it ever was…but the outlet, the manifestation, the strategy for living that call is what is missing in my life right now, and I would go anywhere, do anything, at any cost to realize it once again. Many “words” have been spoken to me and over me, and I believe for the most part, they are “right-on”, straight from the Holy Spirit. These “words” have confirmed that I am going through a wilderness right now, a time of searching, searching within myself, searching for God to know Him more intimately, and searching for the outward manifestation of plan of God for my life and ministry.
I said to someone just last night that I need to listen to my own messages/sermons more often, for I know that the first person they are meant for is ME! I preach to myself, and then trust that others who hear the message(s) are in the same or similar places in their lives, and then I pray that the Word of God will speak to both me and them and bring about whatever God wants to do in our lives. This is definitely true about the whole “wilderness” thing. God gave me a message to preach entitled, “The Redemptive Wilderness”. (Download this message for free from: http://www.riveroflife.net/?page_id=23 ). I have listened to it again and it was as if someone totally different was preaching to me…and only to me. I have trouble believing that I actually spoke those words that I am now listening to. I don’t know if any other preachers/teachers have ever had this experience, but that really doesn’t matter right now. God is using ME to speak to ME!!
There are other things that God is clearly showing me while I’m in the wilderness. Take Moses, for example. He was 40 years old when he took what He thought was “service to God” and killed an Egyptian in defense of a fellow Hebrew. Yup…that was me, too. I never killed anyone, but the same spirit, the same attitude, the same arrogance drove me as it did Moses. God had to humble me and deliver me from myself. It took 40 long years in the wilderness for Moses…so long that He forgot about the call of God on his life and simply accepted the notion that he would be in the wilderness for the rest of his life. It was in the wilderness that the former Moses died, but God’s call on his life did NOT die, it was as sure as ever. At the burning bush God called Moses again…not a different call, but a call to a DIFFERENT Moses…a CHANGED Moses…a HUMBLED Moses…a Moses who was not so full of himself as he was 40 years earlier. The Scripture tells almost NOTHING about Moses’ wilderness years…almost as if they were unimportant. But they were the MOST important years in Moses’ life. Without them Moses would have been the zealot the people wanted. Without them he would have been tempted as Jesus was tempted to try to forcefully overthrow those who kept him and his people in bondage. This is never God’s way…but it is always man’s way. Moses needed his wilderness time, and God drove him there as an act of His mercy and love so that God’s true power would be seen in and worked through a humble, yet spiritually confident, Moses 40 years later. It was only then that Moses could be used by God as the “deliverer” of His people, because it was only then that Moses would know in his heart and proclaim to all without fear and without personal pride that it was not he who delivered the people but it was the power of the living God that did so! It turns out that the wilderness preceded Moses true usefulness in the Kingdom of God…it wasn’t the END of his ministry as he undoubtedly thought 40 years earlier, but it was the mark of the BEGINNING of it!!!!
Then, there is the life of Jesus to consider (no small consideration, huh?)! Other than the first 2-3 years of his life (His birth and one or two childhood stories), we know NOTHING of His life until John the Baptist makes his proclamation when he sees Jesus coming to be baptized (Jesus is 30 years old at this point)…total anonymity for 28+ years. Then, BAM! Jesus is on the scene with the voice of God thundering from the heavens over Him. But, then there’s the wilderness. It seems that one of the main qualifications of every true servant of God is that they not only experience a wilderness “wandering” in their life, but that they be DRIVEN INTO the wilderness by GOD HIMSELF! The Scripture says that Jesus was DRIVEN into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit, and the wilderness was a place of character development, testing, and confirmation of God’s call!…even in the life and ministry of Jesus! And the wilderness was at the very BEGINNING of Jesus’ ministry.
Jonah in the belly of the fish, Moses on the backside of the desert, Jesus driven into the wilderness…it appears to me that I am in not only good company, but the BEST company.
So, I, too, now realize that I am only at the beginning, not at the end, of the ministry God has called me to. There is still much work to be done, much more usefulness for my life and my calling than I have admitted in the past few years. I still don’t see the details of any of it yet, as I’m still waiting for my own personal “burning bush” and for God to personally give me His orders for what to do next. The prophetic words that have been spoken over me by more than a few godly people (totally unrelated to each other, and at different times and from different places) from Romania to Colorado and places in between have confirmed in me the vision that I will be (that I am as God sees me to be) more of an apostle than a pastor, more of a Paul than a Timothy, a minister to ministers, called to cities and regions and not single congregations, to BE the River of Life instead of searching FOR that River, BEING a refreshment to the whole body of Christ, helping to birth congregations in those places, raising up godly leaders, mentoring the servants of God wherever they are and wherever I go, and that I am not to seek to FIND my place in the Kingdom but to know that wherever I am IS my place. Sincerely, I receive these words as from God Himself, and I am eternally thankful for His servants who spoke them into my life. Still, for one who has only ever known the pastoral ministry, one pastor in one church, it is a stretch for my carnal mind and physical being to wrap myself around this vision. It is SO MUCH BIGGER than I am, than I can imagine God ever doing in my life. Yet, I recognize that I have been in the places of both Noah and Moses. God has undoubtedly called me, chased me when I’ve run away, forgiven me, encouraged me, brought me back, then driven me out (into the wilderness), and now I’m waiting for my own personal “burning bush”.
In the meantime, I believe with all my heart that a “stripping away” process is going on. He is directing me to empty myself. He is commanding me to stop all of my “wheel-spinning”, human efforts to try to find or make His call on my life “appear” or manifest (sending out resumes, seeking staff positions, looking for networking opportunities with other pastors/churches, etc., etc.). He is directing me to fast from most (perhaps ALL…I will know this within several weeks from now) of the ministries that I am now involved in so that I can have or BE a “clean slate” for Him to write His will upon in my heart and mind. I am obediently pulling back (not leaving my call or the ministry), I am withdrawing from most church activities and ministries, which I believe is God’s direction for me right now. I am placing my future missionary plans (Romania, Colorado, etc.) on hold for the time being (I’m not forsaking them, just putting them on hold until I hear from the Lord). I am not discouraged, I am not disappointed, I am not angry or bitter in any of this. To the contrary, I am broken, I am humbled, I am poor in spirit, I am naked and transparent before my God. Yet, through it all I am hopeful that, as He promised, I will eventually see God, and in the process I will see myself more clearly than I have ever seen myself before, and my election and calling in Christ will be made more sure in my heart than it has ever been before.
I write and share these things with all of you so that if any of you are in the same or similar place(s) as I am or have been, you can be encouraged along with me. May God add His grace and His favor to what I have written, and may it be received by all who read it in the humble spirit of my heart in which I write and share it.
God bless you all, in Jesus’ Name!
- Pastor Ed Fernandez
