A Ramble About Why God Puts Us Where He Does

Many years ago when I was still in Bible School in Wisconsin, an old friend in my class once told me, “God isn't so concerned about the work of a worker as He is about the work in a worker.” A few years later, he amended his statement to say, “The work of God is the worker.”

I was reflecting on this as I was taking a shower this morning (sorry for the disturbing image). Sometimes it doesn't seem fair when I think I'm doing everything I know how to do to follow Christ and minister to those whom He brings my way, and yet He still won't open up the door yet for a paying job, no matter how many applications and interviews, much less a paid pastoral position. It's still humiliating when someone offers to buy groceries or necessities for my family and I because they believe they have to.

And yet, I am constantly placed into positions where I seem to be at the right place and the right time to give Jesus to the right person in the way they need it. He doesn't need to use me to do this, but He chooses to do so, not for His own benefit, or even necessarily for the benefit of the other person, but for mine.

It is the same with the mega-church pastor of tens of thousands, or the tiny church pastor of mere tens, or the missionary overseas who has malaria and can barely feed his own kids, or the missionary overseas who is living in a two story Victorian home and has a six figure annual donation. No one of us is in the position we're in because we're the most qualified or because we have something better to offer than someone else. God places us into the positions we're in because it's the most efficient way to mature us and bring us closer to His goal of union with Him.

So he places the mega-church pastor where he's at because sooner or later the man will discover he's a sinner and prove it to everyone else who's watching him. In other words, God does this to humble the person towards maturity. He puts me where I'm at so that I'm forced to trust Him, practice moderation, poverty, and obedience under stress, and get to the point where the only home I feel I have is Him. It is the same for every other minister. We don't get the jobs we do because we can do the best job at it. We get the jobs we do because they're the best for us. He doesn't need us to do them. We need us to do them in order to grow. It's a matter of learning obedience, humility, and shedding the attachments to the world which cling to us.

God's biggest goal and concern for us is, and will always be, that we know Him and cooperate with Him. He wants us to be brought to maturity in deification. Compared to this, He could care less about anything else regarding our comfort, stability, or personal successes. As our Father, He really can't do any less. It's similar to me and my kids. My biggest concern for them isn't their happiness. It's that they grow and mature into responsible, compassionate followers of Jesus Christ because I know that in the long view, their happiness and worldly successes are going to come and go, and won't last. So as a responsible parent, my first priority for them has to be what's permanent, not what's transient.

I don't know if I'm really at the point yet where I've got the self-discipline to live how God wants me to live without the external pressures and stresses, but God does and as a responsible parent He acts towards me accordingly. Unfortunately, like a bratty teenager, I kick and scream against His discipline more often than I care to admit. But I can see in my own life that His discipline is beginning, finally, to take some hold on me, and that He was right to enforce it.

We all mature and grow towards His upward calling at our own pace. There really isn't any way to hurry it up. There was a time when I thought that if I just tried to comply and do everything I thought He wanted me to, then I wouldn't have to go through His maturation process. This is a child's reasoning, no matter how well intentioned, and it doesn't work. My kids at times reason this way, and while it may keep them out of worse trouble than otherwise, it won't spare them from having to mature the hard way through time, failure, and experience.

It is through the work God places us in that we learn to emulate our Lord in emptying ourselves, taking the form of a slave, and dying a criminal's death in our pursuit of union with Him. This, and not the “ministry” is the most important work God will ever have us engaged in, and if we don't focus on this first, then any amount of “ministry” work we do is for nothing where we ourselves are concerned, and that is an unacceptable outcome to God.