When you begin pursuing faith, God will most likely lead you into ministries which will require faith.

    In this book, I am using the term ministry to mean:

    Christian service which: 1) is the result of God's direction, and 2) has the primary objective of benefiting other people rather than institutions or yourself.

    This definition doesn't focus on the activity as much as it does on the motivation. For example, you may become a parent volunteer in your child's classroom. If you are doing it merely because you enjoy children and are building skills for possible future employment, it is not ministry. On the other hand, if you are doing it for those same reasons, but you also determine before God that it is at His direction and that you want to influence others for the Gospel, then it becomes ministry. The underlying theme of motivation evaluates the activity as being Christian service, at God's direction, and as something that primarily benefits other people rather than yourself or institutions and facilities. Again, motivation enters into the definition. If you are working on a building project so that you will get time-share in a beach vacation cabin, it isn't ministry. If you are working on a building project because others will benefit in some way, it may be a viable ministry in either a Christian or secular context.

    I am not defining ministry in a technical sense. I am merely emphasizing that ministry is an activity you undertake at God's direction for the benefit of other people. Obviously, you could be involved in something that was not ministry when it first started, but developed into ministry as a result of further planning. Equally, something could cease to be ministry that had begun as such.

    Many activities that are identified as ministry in Christian circles have little to do with faith. Frequently, they are merely activities used to maintain the tradition of that institution. However, even in these settings you may be able to have an excellent ministry. Much will depend on your own viewpoint and purpose as to whether you are seeking a true ministry or merely becoming a custodian of institutional tradition.

    In some areas of ministry, the requirement for faith will be obvious. You may undertake a ministry in which people are overtly resistant to the Gospel or one in which the growth of other Christians has been stifled.

    Other ministries may seem less demanding. These may be existing ministries that already have strong spiritual leadership.

    In either case, God can lead you into very personal and unexpected areas of faith. Faith may focus on the need of a particular individual within the ministry. Faith may cause you to focus on a weakness in your own life. Faith may also focus on the leadership or the institution itself.

    Earlier, I said that as you live by faith, the direction for your life will increasingly come from your time spent with Jesus and less from Christian institutions. This direction may be as simple as a decision to befriend an unbelieving secular co-worker. On the other hand, your life of faith may lead you into ministries that will result in heavy time and financial commitments.

    In these new ministry ventures you must be particularly wise as you pray about God's direction. Learn how to appropriately seek counsel from others. However, there will also be times when the very individuals from whom you would logically seek counsel are the ones most in need of change. There may be times when your life of faith will lead you into solitary decisions. (I am intrigued by the response given to William Carey by his own ministerial association. Carey—who is now known as the Father of Modern Missions—was admonished after a presentation in which he advocated foreign missions. The moderator said to him, "Young man, sit down! You are an enthusiast [radical]. When God pleases to converse with heathen He'll do it without consulting you or me."^[1] Carey went to India in 1793 and successfully translated Scripture into many Indian and Burmese languages. But his lifetime of ministry was dogged by isolation, misunderstanding, and numerous financial and personal failures.)

^[1] William Carey, by Basil Miller, Bethany House Publishers, page 32.

    My personal experience may give an illustration regarding the sequence of faith and ministry. For many years I was active in public ministry roles. None of them, however, involved high risk or more than "conventional" faith. This was true even in the early years after I first began praying for faith.

    As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, I began watching other believers who had a "bigger" God than I did. I wanted to see Him work in my life as well. I began asking God to increase my faith, and if possible, to show me evidence of His power.

    One evening God seemed to respond by giving me a choice. I must be cautious since the impression may simply have come from my own imagination. (This is not said to discredit God's ability to lead; it is merely recognition of my human limitations.) In asking God to increase my faith, I was asking Him to do much more in me than I had allowed Him to do previously. I believe He gave me a specific choice between one of two things He would do in order to show His might. Either He would heal me of my diabetes, or He would bring to Himself a group of people for whom I had been praying with my "conventional" faith.

    My choice was made without hesitation. Healing would merely benefit me and would be only a menial task for the Creator. However, if God would grant my other request, the consequences would resound throughout eternity because of its magnitude. Without being specific, I can assure you that it was then—and remains so today—a humanly impossible task. Without question, I wanted Him to do the latter.

    This request has not yet been answered almost 10 years later. I may not see the answer in my lifetime. But I can see evidence that God is working!

    Since that time, there has been immensely high cost to me in the ministry itself as well as in other areas such as my health. However, both my faith and a resulting prayer ministry have grown significantly.

    I related the above story in order to suggest an answer to the question, "Which comes first, faith or ministry?" Certainly, in my own experience, some viable ministry preceded my pursuit of faith. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that faith has resulted in a vastly increased ministry for me.

    If you want to have an effective ministry, pursue faith. As your faith grows, God can entrust you with more strategic ministries.

    By no means is ministry limited to public activity. In fact, you may find that the more you are able to live by faith, the more God removes you from public ministry. My own experience cannot be taken as a standard, because God deals uniquely with each individual. Nonetheless, God has increasingly taken me out of active public ministries of leadership and Bible teaching and led me into ministries that are out of public view.

    Prayer will become an important part of your life of faith. You may increasingly experience the strategic importance of prayer in doing God's work. I hope you do!

    The contemporary evangelical Church has gone through a span of over forty years in which there has been increasing emphasis on better theological training for clergy and greater organization for institutional ministries. Concurrently, however, the emphasis on prayer has waned. Thankfully, I believe this situation is changing with a new emphasis on prayer among these same churches.

    God may call you to a ministry of prayer either as the primary portion of your ministry or as a complement to your existing ministry. As the believer who is living by faith ages or faces increasing physical limitations, prayer offers continued ministry opportunities.

    J. O. Fraser went to China as a missionary in 1908. His work in taking the Gospel to a remote people group in the mountains of southwest China is a classic story of missionary success.^[2] His biography leaves one with a lasting impression regarding his view of the importance of prayer. As he saw the magnitude of the task he felt God calling him to do, he solicited prayer from a small group of believers in England who committed themselves to faithful intercession.

^[2] Mountain Rain by Eileen Fraser Crossman, or Behind the Ranges by Geraldine Taylor.

    Fraser repeatedly credited God's work among this remote group of people in China to the prayer commitment of this small band of English men and women. Fraser's letters frequently reminded them that their prayer to the Omnipresent God was just as effective as was his prayer and work while he was in the villages.

    God may call any one of us to a prayer ministry that will have as much effect on the eventual outcome of an effort as that of any person directly involved in the work.

    You must avoid unrealistic expectations regarding faith in ministry. Our tendency is to see Elijah's faith only in what took place on Mount Carmel when he called fire from heaven and prayed for rain to bring an end to the drought. We fail to see this same Elijah in hiding for three years, sitting by a brook and watching it run dry, taking cover in a foreign city to escape detection, and finally fleeing from Jezebel who had sworn to kill him by the following day (1 Kings 17-19).

    Hebrews 11:32-34 tells us that faith will not always be immediately rewarded. Unnamed men and women who lived by faith were tortured, jeered, flogged, imprisoned, stoned and left destitute. History also reminds us that many who are remembered today for their courageous faith in proclaiming the Gospel or translating Scripture into the common language of their day never saw the results they hoped for in their own lifetimes.

    Undertaking a ministry in faith does not presume that you will see immediate results or even its eventual completion. We must never attempt to measure our faith by the success of a ministry.

    We want to "bear much fruit" in ministry for Jesus' sake. John 12:24 gives Jesus' instruction for that effectiveness:

    "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (NASB)

    Jesus is telling us that we must die to ourselves if we want to bear fruit. Those of us who live outside of the persecuted Church often limit Jesus' reference to dying as relating to non-material issues such as our personal interests or our self-will. However, that death may also pertain to our health, our finances, or any other area of our lives that God wants to use.

    Two practical questions come from this observation:

1. Can personal suffering promote ministry?

2. Does suffering begin only after I express my willingness to submit to adversity if God so chooses?

    I related the incident in which I felt God gave me a choice to see Him work either through healing of my diabetes or through greatly expanding an existing ministry. Though I am not entirely certain why, I began praying, "Lord, do anything in my life you want to in order to accomplish that impossible ministry task." I look back almost 10 years later and realize how terribly costly that request has been in my health, my finances, my employment, and some other crucial areas as well. Yet, I rejoice in what has been accomplished in both my personal growth in faith and in ministry.

    It wasn't until later, however, that the connection between personal adversity and ministry dawned on me. I often wondered if God really worked in such a seemingly ruthless way. In other words, if I would let Him cause me to suffer, in trade He would promote a ministry or something else that was supposedly His will. But God is not trading tit-for-tat. He does not delight in my suffering even though He may purposely bring it into my life. He brings adversity into my life so that I will learn to trust Him more. That is the answer I needed. I realized that I will serve Him more effectively in ministry as my faith grows through trial.

    Yes, in one sense, God will increase my effectiveness in a ministry if I allow Him to bring adversity into my life. But it is not because He is exacting a price for His blessing in the ministry. It is because He is nurturing my faith so that He can more effectively work through that faith in accomplishing ministry results of His choosing.

    The second question evolves from the first. Does God wait until I express that willingness before He will start the process? Certainly there will be experiences in life when we see God's response only after we have expressed our willingness to be obedient. On the other hand, I have often realized how perfectly God timed events with my health. Forty years ago He began the process that is now resulting in the severe complications of diabetes. (In fact, He probably started the process with a childhood disease when I was six that is a precursor to diabetes.) Nonetheless, He has arranged all these events so that the complications have coincided with my willingness to allow Him to do as He wishes.

    I could analyze this sequence of events endlessly. If I was not a believer, the same sequence of health deterioration may have occurred. All I really need to acknowledge today is that God started a series of events in both my physical and spiritual life so that they complemented each other in spiritual growth and ministry.

    Using faith in ministry will more than likely have a far-reaching influence on your personal finances. I am not advocating that you exercise faith while others pay the bills. Nor am I suggesting that you begin a "ministry" which will produce an income. I am suggesting that you plan your ministry so that it is wholly dependent on your existing personal income or assets.

    The amount of ministry you will be able to do will be in direct proportion to the amount of personal time and money you invest into it. (Prayer certainly requires an investment of time.) Yet, in contrast to our American perspective, this will not depend on the mere size of your income. It will depend on how much of your income is conserved for ministry after you have met necessary expenses.

    As you reduce spending on yourself for the sake of ministry, you will experience the cost of a lifestyle which puts the Kingdom of God first while depending on the Father to provide for your daily needs.

    You alone will be responsible before Jesus for both your ministry finances and time invested. However, assuming that you have only an average or smaller income, let me make these general suggestions:

1. In almost every area of your life, you will need to adopt a simple lifestyle in order to reduce the amount of money you spend on yourself. This will free more of your personal income for ministry.

2. You will gain additional time for ministry in direct proportion to your reduction of personal expenses. Ideally, a simpler lifestyle could allow you to reduce your employment to three or four days per week.

3. You should avoid all indebtedness with only the exception of the purchase of a modest house. This means all credit purchases, including vehicles, clothing, furnishings and the like. You will soon realize that if you are living by faith, God's supply is always ample and timely even when it appears otherwise. Unless He has already supplied you with the cash to purchase something you think you need, then it is unlikely that His will for you is to incur even higher cost by buying it on credit. (See Romans 13:8. Notice that the context of verse 13 deals with mandatory financial obligations.)

    Thus, both the actual ministry itself, as well as your lifestyle which makes that ministry possible, may equally depend on faith. Eliminating all indebtedness may become the means by which you gain both the finances and the time for personal ministry.

    I suspect that in today's world, much of God's provision for effective personal ministry by faith will not come from wealth which He mysteriously gives us. Rather, it will come from a lifestyle lived by faith which frees up resources He has already given.

    If you are in school, you should carefully consider God's leading in the area of personal indebtedness. You would most certainly miss lessons in living by faith if you live with unnecessary debt.