Jesus has called all believers to be ministers of the gospel. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, you and I as believers are to be witnesses for our Savior (Matthew 28:18-20). Living a life that impacts others can be exciting to think about. Serving the God who has saved us is a beautiful thing.
It is good to consider now how you can prepare yourself for a life of ministry, and one of the things you must understand is that preparation takes time.
Understand the Growth Process
The better grounded a believer is in the Lord, the more fruit he is able to produce. The more He is led by the Lord, the more he is able to lead others, and the readier he is to serve and teach the Gospel.
God does want you to minister, but in order for you to do so He must work on your own personal growth and maturity.
Spiritual maturity does not happen overnight. This may be frustrating to some. Our passion and zeal to work for God can cause us to want to leap into things we are not ready for, or try to tackle issues that we don’t quite understand yet.
“A student asked the President of his school whether he could not take a shorter course than the one prescribed. ‘Oh yes,” replied the President, ‘but then it depends upon what you want to be. When God wants to make an oak, He takes a hundred years, but when He wants to make a squash, He takes six months.'” – A.H. Strong
Do you want the Lord to make you a squash, which is useful for a short season? Or would you rather be an oak tree, which stands strong with deep roots to carry it through storm and drought? Do you wish to be able to minister to others as the Lord Jesus would?
Then allow for the fact that He is slowly but surely transforming you to be like the Lord Jesus as you walk with Him.
The Big Picture
The work that God desires to do through you is eternal work, and He will often take His time bringing that about.
We may question why the Lord takes time to develop us, when there is so much urgency and need in people’s lives. But ultimately, we must rest in the fact that God knows best. He has decided that time and experience are two things He wants to use to grow us into believers who can minister well.
Don’t forget that in the big picture, God is doing his work, and taking time to mature you is not going to thwart his purposes.