My friend Sisterlisa from The HomeSpun Life is our guest today. She’s sharing her heart on balancing home and ministry by faith. Let’s gather some wisdom from her walk with the Lord.
Sometimes I hear about other moms who are busy with ministry, homeschool, blogging, writing Ebooks, and making everything at home by scratch and I wonder how they do it all. I used to try to be one of them and it just about broke me, in fact..I think it did. No, I’m sure it did. We thought “full time ministry” was the cream of the crop and that if you wanted to be a serious Christian, busy about the Lord’s work, that we had to pour our lives into the ministry. However, our children saw things differently. When their friends went on camping trips, we couldn’t go. The ministry needed us. When Christmas came around, we couldn’t go out of town to see family like other neighbors could. The ministry needed us. What’s even worse is we tried to insist our kids get involved in doing the very same things we were doing, but it was tearing our family apart. Ministry can be a very good thing and I believe life is a ministry in itself, but not when it gets out of balance.
After just over a decade of full time ministry, God was leading us out. We didn’t understand it at the time. It crushed us. We loved that ministry so much and the people we ministered to, but the Spirit had something else in mind. After the initial shock of it all and not until we grieved our departure, did we finally realize that He was leading us beside stiller waters. He was showing us how to rest so He could minister to us and through us without losing balance.
We literally tried to NOT do ministry, but it kept knocking on our door. Literally. Even though we stepped away from organized ministry, God was sending ministry to us in our everyday lives. One day a family in need would knock, asking for just a few cans of food to make it through until their unemployment checks came in. Another family would come by and need diapers until the husband could graduate from a recovery program and get a job. Broken hearted people came to us in despair after hearing of their pastor’s indiscretion. Ministry wasn’t going to leave us alone.
When the light finally went on for us, that ministry was a daily living, breathing organism in our lives, then we knew… we hadn’t really “left” ministry at all. He had numerous people needing specialized ministering that wasn’t going to happen in our lives if we were busy serving in someone else’s ministry. He had a vision specifically for us and it was high time we took notice of it.
You may hear of missionaries telling their stories about how they knew that Zambia was the place for them. Their churches were supportive and they were sent off with the blessing of their whole church. They took a step of faith and went for it. This ministry of ours wasn’t as easy to convince people of. It took a while for local pastors to get a glimpse of what God was doing in our lives and then we got their support. Walking in faith is a huge deal, because you never know how it’s all going to work out. What we were noticing was that God knew we weren’t going to walk away from our former ministry. So He took us out and showed us how to walk by faith. He discipled us on how to be missionaries in a whole other realm of need.
Had we still been where we were at, we would not have been able to do what we have done in the last year. In order for us to be more organized about our home and ministry, we had to walk by faith. Obeying the Lord when he said, “Leave” wasn’t easy. It was down right confusing at first. People would say that God is not the author of confusion and I do believe that is true, so what in the world were we doing? Maybe Abraham felt the same way when God said, “Go.” Perhaps that’s what the Israelites and Moses felt when God said, “let my people go” and they headed out into the desert. We had no idea what was happening, but we knew it was time to obey him over everyone else.
Some thought we were crazy, sometimes I thought we were crazy. Isn’t this how faith works though? We step out where there is no evidence of what we were to do, and as we took each step, the walkway become obvious. He revealed a stretch of that grace walk a day at a time and we took a step at a time. How did we balance it all? We forsook all.
Downsizing from the busy hectic schedule of ministry was exactly what he was asking us to do. This doesn’t mean He’s going to ask everyone to do this, but he did ask it of us. It was hard. It was emotional. But we knew deep down that we had to.
We stepped back from one thing at a time. Although I no longer served in the nursery or lead the women’s recovery home, I had ministry within my own family to tend to. You may have heard it before, but the truth remains, there is no greater ministry than your home. If your ministry life is too busy for you to have ample time for your priority of home ministry then you are off balance.
Stop spinning plates. You’ve seen it, the guy who spins plates on upright dowels, trying to keep them all spinning so they won’t fall. This isn’t what Jesus meant when he said to be a servant. In fact, the greatest among us is a servant and He is that Servant. He came to serve us and allow us to rest.
Don’t forsake the ‘rest’ He has given you. It’s perfectly acceptable to take time to rest with your family. Any good leadership team of a ministry will support your time away. Even Jesus slipped away from the crowds to be alone and rest.
You need a break too. Since the home and family is the number one ministry for a wife and mother, then you need time to rest as well. Talk to your husband about allowing you one morning a week to sleep in, get in an extra long bubble bath (uninterrupted), or let you go to the movies for a chick flick on your own. We all need a break once in a while so we can come back to our daily ministry refreshed and inspired.
Sisterlisa blogs at The HomeSpun Life and is a Contributing Team Member at The Homeschool Post. Other articles that might inspire your family ministry:
Are you able to support yourself, or do you still need support? If you take their money, you have to put up with their judgments. I personally believe that MOST people should be walking in everyday ministry. It's when you need a reputation, accreditation or support, that you become a mixed message …
Very nicely written. One factor we have seen…we left a church where we were involved in so many ministry opportunities that we were exhausted, worn out, dying. When we joined a new church, within a week we were being pressed to "Be involved," "Help in XYZ ministries", etc. No one could see that we, responsible, able bodied Christians might just need a season of rest. It seemed unspeakable to decline the chance to work in the nursery, to offer to set up and tear down everything before service, etc.
Now we are in yet another new church. Still desperate for a place to be fed after years of ministry, and once again the immediate push to be involved and serve where they think we will be fit. I have become better at saying: "We are still considering that option." And letting it go without feeling guilty and frustrated.
We don't draw support from very many people or ministries, our ministry does what it can to sustain itself now. We offer vocational training for men who are coming out of hard times of life and do work for low income families and elderly. Some companies donate materials to make it more cost effective to help folks. And we have stores who donate food for food boxes. It's needed to have some organization if we're going to apply "many hands make light work" but we need to realize that people need breaks. Daily life is a ministry, especially with a family. We support the idea of having kids involved in some ministry, we teach best by example, but our example should not lead our kids to think it's ok to forsake the family. We are now able to effectively help more people on an intimate level and so many other ministries become conveyor belts of conformity. Life is spontaneous and unscripted. A servant-leader will teach and show by example, what living out ministry looks like on a daily basis, not just on Sundays. If any ministry has consumed our lives so much that we lack energy and finances to help the daily people that come into our lives, then we have become too busy for spontaneous organic ministry life. Most people are in their own hells and need immediate relief in order to have ears to hear the Gospel and it's not fair to make them wait til Sunday. Don't mean to step on toes here… I just have a heart for families who, in their effort to minister end up needing the most help. It's ok to get away.