acts 20

Bless the lord, O my soul. I am hopeless without you. I cannot worship, I cannot sit and be with you God unless you create the desire and the will in me to do so. You know the way my heart is bent, and that it is bent toward doing for you instead of being with you. But today, I am here to be with you. I have little to say to you, God, because I want this time to be filled with your word. I want your word on my lips, written on my heart. I have asked you to teach me how ministry is done. You drew me to Acts.

Paul says, in Acts 20,

You yourselves know how I have lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that have happened to me through plots of the jews; how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there except that the holy spirit testifies to me that in every city, imprisonments and afflictions await me. But I did not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I have finished my course and the ministry that I have received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

You lay out for us, Lord, how to do ministry. If we can say to a person, to a school, to a community, you know how I have been living AMONG you, I have been in your homes, I have been serving the Lord instead of people, the gospel instead of social justice, we will be testifying to you lord. If we do not account our life of any value, precious to ourselves, if we do not account any service as too low, only, only to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. It changes everything. The gospel, the spirit. We just live among, and serve, and then testify always. To every person, every age, everywhere. Humbly and thankfully say, my life is about the gospel, the grace of God: Jesus. You will do the rest. You need nothing from us. But you have given us, you have given me a course and a ministry that I want to finish-declaring the counsel of God and caring for the church.Loving her. Being her. Protecting her. And lord when you tell us to go, not when we get bored, now when we want to travel or carve a new life or get tired, but when you draw us elsewhere, we commend the people we love over to God, knowing that we have helped raise up and cultivate disciples who we can trust you will care for, you will keep in the word of your grace, which can build them up and can give inheritance to those that are sanctified. Give us hands to minister, when my hands want to take and hoard. Give us strength to labor for the weak. Not to convert them, but out of our love for them that flows from you.

It is more blessed to give than to receive. Jesus