As you set out to serve God in ministry, I encourage you to be or do the following as you follow your dreams:
1. Always do what you believe is God’s will
There is a story in the Bible of a young prophet who was deceived by an older prophet. As a result, the young prophet followed the lying older prophet, disobeying instructions God had given him earlier. Because of that, God caused a lion to attack and kill the young prophet. (Read 1 Kings 13)
Do what you are convinced is God’s will, not what the experts say. In this story, the older prophet was the expert, and following his advice led the young prophet to death! However, one finds safety in the company of many wise counselors. Surround yourself with wise people you can trust. If two or three of them feel you are wrong on an issue, you need to pause. If they can hear God as well as you do or better, ask yourself why they are not hearing God say the same thing when you are. Only proceed when you have a good reason to do so.
2. Be teachable, open-minded, and willing to reexamine what you believe
Listen to advice and question yourself to make sure that you are hearing God well. However, at the end of the day, do what you are fully convinced that God wants you to do. It’s better to make a mistake doing what you believe God wants you to do than to be right doing what you don’t believe God wants you to do. We are called to walk by faith.
Be willing to challenge your own paradigms and correct them when necessary. A paradigm is a belief system, a mindset, the lens through which we see and interpret the world around us. A paradigm serves as the map we use to navigate the world. If you have the wrong map, you will end up in the wrong place. A paradigm is like the operating system of a computer. If it’s wrong, every other program put on the computer will operate wrongly.
3. Strongly consider what experts and teachers say because they are usually right
Even though you should only do what you believe God is telling you to do, you will do yourself great harm if you ignore wise counsel. The truth is that wise people aren’t right all the time. But they are right many more times than you and I. They know much more than we do. They are the experts in their respective fields. They may be right 90% of the time, even 99% of the time. The few times that they are wrong, many people often say that in their testimonies. For example, you frequently hear people saying the doctors gave them six months to live, and they outlived that prognosis. While that may be true, it’s easy to forget that these medical experts may be right 99% of the time with their prognoses. The temptation may be for us to blow off their advice simply because they have been wrong before. Of course, that’s not wise.
Because experts are not God, you should strongly consider their advice but test everything they say. Paul says, “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.” (1 Thess. 5: 19-22). The Living Bible translates verses 21-22 as: “But test everything that is said to be sure it is true, and if it is, then accept it. Keep away from every kind of evil.” The MSG puts it nicely, too, “Don’t suppress the Spirit, and don’t stifle those who have a word from the Master. On the other hand, don’t be gullible. Check out everything, and keep only what’s good. Throw out anything tainted with evil.”
The truth is this: the Bible expects you to test what you hear, even from teachers. No teacher I know will teach you something if they didn’t think it was God’s will–that is what God will have you do; that before God and man, that’s the right thing to do. That is no different than a prophecy they give you. But do you have to accept everything? Absolutely not.
The key question is, should you get angry and stop listening to a teacher because they hold an opinion that you disagree with? The answer is no. God commands us to honor our teachers and elders. You should continue the lesson or the class, finish it, and keep what the teacher has said somewhere. Don’t do it unless you are convinced that God has shown you it’s his will.
In the world of science, inventors have been killed or ostracized for telling the truth. Some have died only for the crowd to come along and see they were right. There is always a chance that we could be wrong, even if that chance is small. You should pay attention to what teachers say and only go against what they advise when you are sure that they are wrong or God is telling you otherwise. Remember what the Proverbs say about people who don’t listen to instruction? “Stop listening to instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge.” Prov. 19:27 The few times they are wrong are important, and you want to be very careful that you don’t simply do everything they say.
When I was an undergraduate at Rice University in Houston, Texas, a counselor who didn’t even know me tried to discourage me from going to medical school by telling me how hard it was to get in. He condescendingly encouraged me to do something else because the chances were so slim I would be admitted. Despite what he said, I got into my first choice of medical school and graduated on time. The expert may have had a point. He was making the general trends be true for me when God had something different for my unique situation.
4. Live your beliefs
With God, it’s more important that you live your beliefs than that you do what is right. God wants you to do right because you believe that is the right thing to do. He doesn’t want you to violate your conscience and do what you don’t believe simply because somebody tells you.
For example, if you believe God wants you to start an orphan care institution with many children in it–and you have taken the time to really question yourself, seek advice from wise counselors, and confirm that calling–then you must obey God, not man, and do it even if experts tell you that an orphanage with many kids is not good. However, when you go against what is wise and well-researched, your threshold for discerning God needs to be increased. You need to make sure that you know it’s God speaking to you.
5. Learn to hear God for yourself
I have discipled people who often wanted me to tell them what I believed was God’s will about something they wanted to do. Many of them respected me and would, in many cases, go with what I said. However, I have decided not to tell them what God’s will is. Instead, I teach them how to hear God for themselves and encourage them to discern God’s will for their situation. They need to carefully test their promptings to ensure they are from God. Then, they should proceed according to their faith.
Learning to hear God for yourself is one of the most important things you can do for your spiritual growth.
6. Be a believer, a thinker, a listener, and a teachable person all in one.
Having faith in God, using the mind that God has given you to think things through, listening to others for advice on areas of their expertise, and maintaining a teachable heart will take you far in your walk with God.
7. Test everything I will teach you. Keep the good, and throw away the bad.
Take everything I would say in this course, test it, keep what you believe is true, and throw away what you don’t believe is true. Only do what you believe is right!
At this point, I encourage you with these words from the apostle Paul.
For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen (Ephesians 3:14-21).
