Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
– James 4:13-16
My husband and I are both what I call “planner personalities.” We like to have a plan and know what to expect – which is ironic, considering that I am married to a pastor, and our marriage means that we live ministry lives where we could be called to go anywhere at any time. God has a sense of humor, right?
Our ministry plan right out of college and seminary was to find an associate pastoral role where my husband could thrive under the mentorship of an older, wiser pastor. It seemed like the best plan possible, where we could both minister and be trained at the same time. However, that wasn’t God’s plan for us. God’s plan for us was to take a solo pastorate in a tiny church in northern Wisconsin, where we were thrown into the fire. It was tough and refining all at once, both rewarding and painful. Eventually, we reached a turning point when we knew we were not the right fit for the congregation anymore and we felt called to leave. As we planned to leave, we both felt our ministry hopefulness fading from our hearts. That hope of seeing your congregation grow and flourish, that hope of seeing God move in amazing ways. We felt our love for ministry dying.
When God’s call to a new church came, we moved with hope rekindled – hope that this new family of believers would be a place where we could be used by God to encourage brothers and sisters in Christ. Hope that we would feel a part of the church family in a way that we hadn’t in a while. And as we coaxed our rekindled hope back into life, I began to formulate an unofficial exit plan. If the church began to hurt us or shut us out the way we had been hurt or shut out before, then we would leave. We wouldn’t let our love for ministry suffer again. Without realizing it, I began to put my hope for ministry into a self-made plan.
We have been in our “new” church home for 5 ½ years now. According to my self-made exit plan, we should have left several times over now. There is never an end to the pain and difficulty that accompanies ministry life, and that is true here just as it will be wherever we serve. Yet each time there has been hurt or difficulty, we seek God. And so far, each time, He has been clear about His plan for us: stay.
Many times we have found ourselves hoping for things to “get better,” or for certain people to change, or for any number of things that we believe would make our ministry lives easier. Yet God’s plan for us has been to listen to the words of James and not put our hope for ministry in our own plans, or in things getting better. God’s plan is for our ministry hopefulness to be rooted in following Him even though we don’t know what to expect – for us to be able to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
When we are following God’s will, we can have hope that He is going to do great things. We can have hope that He will use us, even if we can’t always see how or why things are going the way they are. We are just a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes, but God’s plan is so much bigger and broader than us. We can put our ministry hope in His plan and know that He sees how our little mist fits into the bigger picture. As we put our hope in following God’s will for our ministry, our marriage grows as well. We are patiently enduring together, growing closer both to God and each other.
When I’m willing to lift my eyes from the best plans I can conjure up (which are all very me-focused and usually involve zero pain and plenty of comfort), I’m able to recognize that God’s plan for us is infinitely better. I’m able to see that His plan for our ministry may not look how I’ve envisioned, but it’s perfect. And when I’m able to see that, I’m also able to see some of the good that He’s done. I’m able to stop focusing on only the hurts and pains of ministry, but the joys and gifts too. I’m able to see how the fire my husband and I walk through together makes us stronger as a couple, stronger because we are always learning how to lean into God.
Some days I’m amazed that we’re still here, when there are so many reasons according to my exit plan to have left already. But God has kept us here, and we’re able to have peace about that because we know we’re in the center of His will. We’re even excited to see how God continues to work out His plan in ways we could have never dreamed or imagined in even our best laid plans.
Our ministry hopefulness has bloomed and grown into a far more beautiful hope because our hope is no longer in things “getting better,” or going according to our plans, but in Christ and serving Him. We don’t need to know what that’s going to look like, because He does. What better plan could there be?
