The mystery of God's calling
Hi there, everyone. I'm Jared.
Zanita Fletcher:And I'm Zanita.
Jarrod Stackelroth:We are your hosts of RecordLive, a podcast where we talk about church, faith, and living well.
Zanita Fletcher:We believe as followers of Jesus, faith is more than just a set of beliefs. It's a way of life, something we put into practice.
Jarrod Stackelroth:Let's go live. It's that time again. RecordLive. Welcome back. It's wonderful to have you with us.
Jarrod Stackelroth:We've got Zenita, my co host.
Zanita Fletcher:And we have Jesse.
Jarrod Stackelroth:A special guest today.
Jesse Herford:Hello. Very Thank you for having me, guys.
Jarrod Stackelroth:A wonderful man who is about to become a father for the first time. Very exciting. We're prerecording today's episode so that Jesse can join us because we don't know when baby Herford will come. Jesse, any updates?
Jesse Herford:None so far. She is due on 9th of March. So about 6 days from now or 5 days. So it's you know how babies are, Jarrod. You know better than the rest of us.
Jesse Herford:They sometimes on time, but I think more likely, they're usually early or lates. I don't know that they ever really arrive when they're supposed to according to the doctors. Percent.
Jarrod Stackelroth:Really? Babies arrive on their due date. So, like, why even bother?
Zanita Fletcher:Yeah. 9th 9th is a very common birth date.
Jarrod Stackelroth:Is it?
Zanita Fletcher:Yeah. I know, like, 4 people on 9th.
Jesse Herford:Wow. Not the 9th March. Just like 9th of whatever.
Zanita Fletcher:The 9th March.
Jesse Herford:Oh, well, there you go. Maybe my baby will be part of the 4%. And if that's the case, you'll know one more person.
Zanita Fletcher:It'll make it easier for me.
Jarrod Stackelroth:Yeah. Well, Jesse, we wish you all the best with all of that. Whenever it happens, hopefully, it won't be late at night or on the Sabbath. You know? Have a good anyway, we're here.
Jarrod Stackelroth:We've got Jesse to talk to us today because we were casting around for ideas, Anita and I, and we thought Jesse would be great for this conversation. There's been an article in the record called I missed my call to ministry, and Jesse is a minister. He's been called and he's been ordained, and he is currently working with us at Signs of the Times Magazine, but he is still a pastor at heart, and he's got that pastoral background. So we thought we'd talk to him today. Now the piece we ran was anonymous because the person is wrestling with existential questions about this calling that they claim in their peace they have missed.
Jarrod Stackelroth:They have a career in another field, but they feel called to ministry, and so they're wrestling with that in the piece. And I don't like to run anonymous pieces because it's good to have a name to a claim. But in this piece, it just seemed right because the guy, he really wrestles with these questions, and I reflected and read the piece, and I could sense there was a lot of anguish and a lot of difficulty, but I thought it would be worth running because it opens a conversation about calling in the church. It opens a conversation about calling that may lead to positive things. There may be people reading this piece who act on a call that they might have felt.
Jarrod Stackelroth:It may prompt someone reading to action, and that's always what we hope for at record. So I thought it was worth running at the end, but today, we're gonna talk about calling. Now in the Adventist Church, it's sort of a mysterious thing. I was called to do such and such a thing, and then all of a sudden, it's almost unquestionable. You can't argue with someone's calling after that, or can you?
Jarrod Stackelroth:So we're gonna unpack some of these ideas today. So where do we start? What's calling? What do we mean by the word calling? Let's start there.
Jesse Herford:Sure. Well, calling is a it's a thing that runs all throughout the Bible from the Old Testament to the New, and there's a couple of different words that are used. I don't think it's probably that useful to really dig into the Hebrew or the Greek because I just I think the idea is more powerful than the language. I'm sure if we had a Bible scholar on the podcast of the livestream, they'd be able to tell us all sorts of wonderful things about the original language. But the idea of calling, I think probably a good place to start for us, is the story of Abraham or Abram, because that's, I think, one of the first really notable stories in the Old Testament where there is a definitive calling.
Jesse Herford:Genesis chapter 12 is often, if you've got a Bible that has, like, subtitles, it's often titled the call of Abram. And in verse 12, it says, now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. Oh, and by the way, just so that we all know, I'm reading from the NRSV in case you are wondering about my translation.
Jesse Herford:So there's a couple things, I think, in this passage that tell us about calling. The first is that it's often God making contact with the character, in this case, Abram, and God is calling them for a specific purpose. And I I think that's really key when it comes to understanding biblical calling because God doesn't ever really call anybody in the Bible just for no reason or to make them feel nice or whatever. In this case, God is calling Abraham and his whole family, of course, to go to a specific place, the fabled land of Canaan, and to make his home there so that God can make his family into a great family, a nation that will bless all the nations through it. And this is key fundamental sort of biblical theology.
Jesse Herford:Right? This is a foundational story for not just the Christian faith, but for the Jewish faith. You know, Abram is a is a revered part of both of our religious faiths. And so I think this is probably a good place to really illustrate what calling looks like. The Old Testament is full of stories just like Abram's where we have a character who is singled out by God to complete a specific task.
Jesse Herford:Other characters you could probably put in the same category are people like David who is singled out because of his great character. He's singled out also for a purpose. The prophets are also called. But calling isn't just for single people because God, throughout the Old Testament, also calls to the people, the people of Israel, specifically. The nation that he called Abram to start.
Jesse Herford:And we see this especially in the Psalms and the Proverbs. A lot of the poetry literature is about God calling out to his people and saying, be he in a right relationship with me. Be the kind of people that I have called you to be so that I can be the God that you need me to be. And we see this all throughout the Old Testament. So I think that's probably a foundational sort of idea of what calling is.
Jesse Herford:It might sound a little bit elementary, but it really does inform the story of the Bible and also the way that calling is kind of subverted and changed once we get to the New Testament.
Zanita Fletcher:Interesting. So I I guess to clarify, because I feel like you're maybe saying 2 things there. We have Abraham who has like a specific calling and we often hear in the church this language of calling when it comes to a pastor. Like, people often say they are called to ministry. But then you look at the world or like the motivational vocational language and you often hear people saying everyone has a calling or what's your calling or live into your calling.
Zanita Fletcher:And it's as though every single one of us, which is probably what I've tend to think, has a calling that we need to step into. When we look at the Bible, is it both or is it more of 1 or like, is it something that just passes get? Or do we all have a calling?
Jesse Herford:That's, I think, probably the $1,000,000 question, Zenita. And it's possibly the question that can really help us to understand not just the idea of calling, but also this this article that Jared referenced. Yes. It's often seen as 2 different things in our culture. We often see the calling of ministry people, ministers, pastors, to some extent, church administrators, teachers as well.
Jesse Herford:Definitely used to be much more of a mystical calling, not so much anymore. But there, as you have pointed out, is a seeming push or some rhetoric that we've inherited in the Christian world around the idea that everybody is a minister. And that's actually something that one of my mentors, doctor Wayne Krause, used to hammer into me all the time when I was at his church. He always used to say to us and to his church, everybody's a minister. And that was a way of, I guess, not not putting us down or himself as the minister, the leader, but to remind us that we all have a part to play.
Jesse Herford:And I would argue, actually, that it's even bigger than we just have a part to play. And the reason is because of the ministry of Jesus. So we get to the ministry of Jesus in the New Testament, and we have the gospels and these biographical accounts of Jesus. And he, as a figure, as a messianic figure, as a man, as a God, as, you know, all of these things wrapped into 1, which is an incredibly mysterious thing, throughout the whole of the gospels feels this calling very, very keenly. We I only have to see Luke's account to see even a child Jesus who is in the temple and who gets separated from his parents.
Jesse Herford:Even as a kid, he feels this calling as he talks to the Pharisees and the religious leaders. And he feels that throughout the whole of his ministry in in Israel. But, really interestingly, when Jesus speaks to his disciples about the things that he is, I guess, setting them up to do, So we have this sense in many different parts of the Gospels where Jesus is trying to prepare his disciples for when he's gonna leave. You know, there's the stories about the Holy Spirit. And Jesus says things like, all these things that I'm doing, all the healing and the teaching and the casting out of demons, you're gonna do even greater things than what I've done.
Jesse Herford:And there's sort of a sense of, well, you're our rabbi, and we're your apprentices. Doesn't that mean that we cannot eclipse what you are doing? And we we even see this in the Last Supper where Jesus is washing his disciples' feet, and it's very kind of controversial. And they're like, I don't understand what this is like. There's a lot in that.
Jesse Herford:But when Jesus dies and then rises from the dead, he doesn't start a new movement. He sticks around for, the Bible tells us, 40 days or so, And then he ascends to heaven. And the disciples are then kinda left like, what are we gonna do now? And then, of course, as the story moves on, we have Pentecost, we have the Jerusalem Council, we have the Ministry of Paul and Silas and Barnabas and all of these early figures going throughout and spreading the good news everywhere. And that's when we get to the New Testament.
Jesse Herford:And scholars kind of think of 1st Corinthians being roughly one of the earliest pieces of Christian writing, like chronologically to have been produced. And so when we get to 1st Corinthians, we have Paul talking to the church and saying that you have been called. I have been called as an apostle, and then you have been called as well. So what is he talking about? Well, in Pauline theology, we see this kind of switch where he talks about what Jesus has done.
Jesse Herford:And there's the process through which one becomes an apprentice, but the calling of being a follower of Jesus is not just to kind of learn what Jesus learned. It's also to to step in line with what Jesus is doing in the world. And with the Holy Spirit as our guide, I've started to try and use the word apprentice more than disciple or apostle or whatever because I think it better illustrates and explains what it is that we're doing when we become followers of Jesus. We're not just following him. We're actually trying to be like him.
Jesse Herford:And so in the same way that an apprentice builder works their way up from year 1 till until they graduate to become a builder in their own right. It's not that we're becoming like we're not becoming another Jesus, but we are being like Jesus, and we are being molded into his spirit into his image, with the Holy Spirit. And so when it comes to calling, there is a switch. Because with Abram or the prophets or David or any of these Old Testament characters or even Jesus himself, there's this sense in which God has called you, specifically, he calls Abram and not Bob, Abram's neighbor down the road. He calls David and not Joshua, the kid next door.
Jesse Herford:But with the New Testament and with being a follower of Jesus, there's a sense now in which I have agency of stepping into the life and the ministry of Jesus by apprenticing to him, which has now been made available to me because of Jesus' life, death, resurrection. I now get to step into something bigger than myself to be part of what Jesus is doing in the world. And so in that sense, I am called to even though, perhaps, God didn't peer down from heaven, say, hey, Jesse, I pick you. Right? If that makes sense.
Jesse Herford:Look, I'm very conscious of the fact that I've been talking for a long time. So somebody else jump in.
Jarrod Stackelroth:It's interesting you've taken us on a bit of a tiki tour through the biblical idea. But I guess in modern Adventist conception of calling, there's almost a split thing where we have a calling as a people. We have a special mission that we believe. We are all to expound the everlasting gospel, the 3 angels' messages to to people around the world. We've got a special message for a special time.
Jarrod Stackelroth:That's what we believe as Adventist that we're all to be doing as Adventist church members. I think there is that sense of corporate calling, that sense of priesthood of all believers. We're supposed to be all on mission, if you will, But we have almost a stratified sense of the calling. The individual calling still exists, and it's just for ministers, which is interesting because you say that somewhat flipped from the Old Testament to the New Testament. But in the Old Testament, we had the priesthood, which was the Levites.
Jarrod Stackelroth:It wasn't a calling based on an individual's gifts or talents per se. It was a hereditary priesthood. It went from that tribe, they had roles in the different families, but they were essentially the the clergy class, the the priests. They did all the temple roles. They did all of that stuff.
Jarrod Stackelroth:And then you don't have that so much in the New Testament, but you do have spiritual gifts, and those are then available to everyone. So it's almost switched around, like, where it's like everyone has a spiritual gift, but what is yours gonna be, and how how are you gonna do that? And yet in our church, we do seem to have a very special sense of individuals are called to pastoral ministry and have to have a very clear and very special and very set apart sort of call, we expect that. People claim that. They say, I am doing this because I was called, and it means a whole heap of things.
Jarrod Stackelroth:There's a whole heap of baggage behind that. So I guess that's an interesting question to me in how calling has changed. You've highlighted how it's changed through the Bible, and we do all have a calling to be sharing the gospel. But what if how do we know if it's an individual calling? How do we know if God is speaking directly to us to do a certain thing, or we should just take his more broad instructions?
Jarrod Stackelroth:We should all be spreading the gospel.
Jesse Herford:I think the first thing is to say it takes a certain level of audacity to feel like you're called to be a minister. I think the same kind of audacity that it takes to start a YouTube channel or to write a book or to start a podcast. Because, essentially, what you're saying is that I feel a call to share publicly my thoughts or ideas with the world in a way and in a medium that everybody is gonna some people are gonna have to listen to. So for my own part, the, I suppose, call to ministry for me was something that I didn't really I didn't want to feel because I guess thought, well, you know, the call to ministry is something that happens to people who are naturally gifted, or who are obviously destined for a certain role. I think it becomes very tricky to talk about this when the call to ministry is not just a call to a certain vocation.
Jesse Herford:It's also a call to a vocation with a paycheck and a an employee handbook, and a code of conduct, and a hierarchy, and signing on the dotted line for certain expectations. When I started in ministry, I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork saying that if I do this, that, or the other thing, it could be grounds for termination. And that's just normal for anybody who's getting a job. But all that to say, it becomes complicated when you're calling, when you say to a potential organization, I'm called to work at your organization. I don't know that there's any other arena in life where this is true.
Jesse Herford:I mean, if you're a tech software engineer, you don't just turn up to Apple and say, I feel called to work at Apple and to create whatever. That just doesn't happen. You have to go through all the normal processes. And there are processes you have to go through to become a minister, and there are processes you have to go through to get through your internship and then to be a licensed pastor and then eventually a con an ordained pastor. That's all fairly normal, but I guess yeah.
Jesse Herford:The question that you're asking is really, what's the difference between feeling called to be a professional minister in the context of a denomination, and just feeling like I have gifts of teaching, of shepherding, of all the things that you would normally associate with a leader. And it's tricky because when you look at the early church, you definitely had people like, I mean, we have a saying, the road to Damascus. I had a road to Damascus experience that's become shorthand for just a momentous event that took me out of my comfort zone and shocked me and put me in a completely different direction.
Jarrod Stackelroth:Because some people will claim, I I didn't want to do this or I don't have the gifts and talents to do this, but I'm called to do this or have to do this. You do do you understand? Yeah. People will say that, and it may not be about pastoring even, but it's like, I need to start this ministry or I need to do this. And, actually, I didn't want to do it, but God made me do it almost, in And I've met
Jesse Herford:people I've met people like that. I met I'm one of the people in my class when I started at Avondale said to everybody very proudly, I don't really like people, just in general. But I feel called to ministry, therefore, here I am. And I'm just when it comes to to to those kinds of people I don't know where he is now, to be frank. When it comes to those kinds of stories of I didn't really wanna do this, or I don't feel like I don't want to be a preacher.
Jesse Herford:I don't want to be a teacher. I don't want to be a leader in a church, but I feel called to ministry. Yeah. That's it's very hard because calling, I think I think this is not heretical to say, but we'll we'll hold the room after this. I think call can only get you so far.
Jesse Herford:It's all very well to be called, and somebody can be absolutely called by God, but if you don't do anything with that calling, or if you step into that calling and don't do the work to attain it, I don't see how it can end up any other way than disastrous. You know, I think that we have some pretty clear examples of that in in the Bible. I think of people like David who clearly had a calling to be a great leader, Israel's greatest king, and yet at the very end of his life, he fumbles the bag and ends his kingship disastrously. There are many prophets like that as well. Even Abram, I mean, for goodness sakes, Abram gets called by God.
Jesse Herford:He goes out, and the very first story in Genesis chapter 12 is of him going to Egypt, selling out his own wife, pretending like he's she's his sister, and for some reason, God in his infinite wisdom and love decides to stick with Abram. And so, look, I think God can stick with people and work through their flaws, but I think you also have to be willing to work through it. And one thing I was gonna say is it's difficult it's difficult to have a a perfect parallel from a biblical standpoint of calling when you think of the fact that in the early church, you had guys like Paul and Barnabas and so forth who were going around planting churches. So they were fulfilling the role of evangelist. They were fulfilling the role of church planters, of leadership gurus, pastoral care experts.
Jesse Herford:But Paul, from what we can tell in the text, was also kind of bivocational. Like, he was selling tents and stitching up canvas and all that sort of stuff to pay for a lot of this, and he did have a lot of financial support. We know that from his letters. He would often thank so such and such for generously supporting, and he would ask for support from from various other churches. But he wasn't an employee of the conference, and he wasn't receiving a regular paycheck, and neither were any of the pastors, quote unquote, the biblical writers would probably more like call them elders who were part of the day to day running of these churches that Paul was was starting up.
Jesse Herford:None of them were on the payroll. None of them were part of the conference staff. None of them had super. It was a volunteer thing. And we don't see the professionalization of the clergy until a couple 100 years later.
Jesse Herford:We had bishops, and we had priests and all that sort of stuff as the church progresses and becomes more of an institution. And I'm not a let's glamorize the past and just go back the way they did in the 1st century because that's clearly much better. Organizations' movements eventually become institutions. That's just how it is. And as much as many of us would like that not to be the case, I think it's almost inevitable.
Jesse Herford:So the professionalization of clergy and the confusion between calling and profession is a really difficult conundrum. And I don't know that I have a definite good answer for that aside from saying that I'm not a practicing pastor at the moment. I didn't stop being a pastor, though, when I came and worked at Signs of the Times. Some people may not see it that way, but that I do see it that way. So yeah.
Zanita Fletcher:Mhmm. Awesome. I love those thoughts. The other author in the article, and the anonymous author, he also wrote that he had all of the markers, that the Bible suggests to be called into ministry. People can have skills and talents and things like that and there's obviously pay that comes along with it.
Zanita Fletcher:There's a lot of factors that speak into that. But are there specific markers that people, if they're not sure whether they're called or not or whether they're receiving an actual prompt from God or if it's just the cultural expectations or family expectations. I feel there's a lot of things I can speak into whether you're cold or not or making you feel like you're cold when it could just be other factors. But is there stuff in the bible that actually we can look at and be like, oh, I am called, or maybe I'm not,
Jarrod Stackelroth:or Mhmm.
Jesse Herford:I think community is a huge part of your calling. I really struggle when I hear people say that they believe that they're called, but nobody else is saying that in their immediate context. For my part, I didn't feel the call until my church community started to affirm things in me in terms of leadership, in terms of, teaching ability, in terms of working with people, because I've done that ever since I was 12 or 13. I would go and be like my local youth director's little minion running around, helping to set up things, going to big camps, doing tents, doing sound desk, playing my violin, blah blah blah, all that sort of stuff that a lot of us did when we were growing up. And so it's through that that I was exposed to people who were in ministry professionally, and who were doing things, and who not only had an opportunity to affirm things that they saw in me, but also had opportunities to build capacity in me in some of these various ways.
Jesse Herford:I do think that pastoral ministry is something that you can volunteer to do. I think it is. Because if it were not the case that you could volunteer, then I think the pool would be very extraordinarily small. And I think that not every church needs a paid mister. I don't wanna devalue the work that many of my amazing colleagues do, but I also do think that different churches have different needs, and that we all every church needs leadership, and that doesn't always necessarily need to come from a minister.
Jesse Herford:But I think, more than anything else, when we elevate the call of the few, the lucky ones, and I'd look, if that's the categories we're using, then I count myself as one of the lucky ones. You know, I've had my fair share of challenges. I've had my fair share of moments where I didn't feel like I was enough, or I was so frustrated that I felt like throwing in hell. I wasn't sure if I was gonna get a job next year or what the future might bring. But I'm here, I'm still working in the church.
Jesse Herford:I'm ordained. I feel fulfilled in what I'm doing. And I have immense, immense empathy for people for whom that's not the case, who feel like they've had a calling. For our friend here, our anonymous friend, who feels like he's missed his calling. I have friends who graduated and did their masters, and did that and the other thing, and did Bible studies, and they worked in a church volunteering after trying to,
Jesse Herford:you
Jesse Herford:know, have hold down a full
Jesse Herford:time
Jesse Herford:job elsewhere, and they still didn't get called to ministry. That's just heartbreaking because, as I said again, it's complicated when a paycheck is involved because it's not just about your calling on a spiritual sense. There's a lot of other really practical things that go along with it. So in terms of your question, Zenitha, I think that if your church community and people that you trust and people that you respect speak into you that they think that you would be a good minister for x y zed reasons, then I think that's something to take notice of. And look, if you're a young person, like a 17 year old, 18 year old, and you don't know what you're doing with your life, sometimes that's what you need.
Jesse Herford:You need somebody to firm something in you to help you push you in the right direction. Or maybe you're a 28 or 38 year old and you want a change of career in your in your local church. That's also a great opportunity. When I was at Avondale, there were a number of folks in my class who were in their thirties, forties, 1 or 2 even in their fifties who heeded that call, and that's a huge sacrifice. And not everybody's ministry journey ends in the same place.
Jesse Herford:I didn't think that I would end up in this place working with you guys. But here I am, and I'm not sorry, and I'm not, you know, mad about that in the slightest. I'm happy. I'm really happy that I I followed that. And you could say in a way that, Jared, you called me, you know, or that God called me through you or something.
Jesse Herford:I I don't know how you wanna conceptualize it. But I think that you should also be open to whatever it is that God is calling you to, whether it's full time ministry, bivocational ministry, or ministry in a different context. It's all ministry in my estimation.
Jarrod Stackelroth:And just on a human level, reflecting on the piece, as I read it, I sensed someone who was really wrestling with communicating with God, hearing from God, knowing they were enough in terms of what they were doing, and I guess I reflect on that and I resonate with resonate with that. I believe God's called me into what I'm doing right now. I think God's given me equipped me and taken me down this road, but that doesn't mean there aren't seasons in my life where I really wrestle with, was it really God or was I just making it up? Did God have a different plan? Or is there one perfect plan for my life?
Jarrod Stackelroth:And if I make a mistake, I've ruined the plan. Like, I think Moses, who came to rescue the Israelites at 80 years old, shows us that they may it's never too late. And also that God's path, God's plan for our lives isn't always clear. We don't always see it, and we don't always know in the midst of it. We've talked about this, Anita, before.
Jarrod Stackelroth:You can wrestle with things and not hear from God for a season, and it's
Jesse Herford:a real it's there's a
Jarrod Stackelroth:lot of doubt. There's a lot of fear. It's a struggle. And I think for myself reading this piece, I was resonating with that on a human level. I just felt this guy's struggle, and I was like, wow.
Jarrod Stackelroth:I feel that. Because I've had seasons where it's been hard to know, and then you look back and often you see, actually, God really led me. I was waiting for God, and he showed up. Eventually, he showed up. But while you're waiting, it can be quite difficult.
Jarrod Stackelroth:So I think that's something for us all to remember. No matter what god has called us to, he has called us, and he does care, and he is working with us, and it's never too late to work for him and to be more and more like him. As Jesse started off by saying, we have the ministry of Jesus to be more like Jesus, to be apprentices. I really like that picture, that visual picture of being an apprentice of Jesus and trying to share Jesus with the world around us. We always end on a practical note, and we've run out of time.
Jarrod Stackelroth:It's been a really rich conversation today, Both of you, Zenita, what's something you can take away this week that can either encourage you or you can think further about that challenged you you'd like to see yourself do in the next week that's come out of this conversation today?
Jesse Herford:You wanna go first, Anita?
Zanita Fletcher:You go. Okay.
Jesse Herford:One one passage I wanna leave us with, and it's maybe a little bit of a weird one. It's 1st Corinthians 7 verse 21. And Paul is saying, were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present condition now more than ever.
Jesse Herford:Now there's a lot that we could talk about in this passage. We could talk about the Bible's stance on slavery. We could talk about the fact that Paul genuinely believed that Jesus was gonna be returning in their lifetime. And this is a whole part of a whole passage where Paul is just saying, look, whatever condition you're in, just stay there. Because what his point is is the time is short, make use of where you are right now.
Jesse Herford:And, look, we don't know when Jesus is gonna be returning, but we are Adventists, and so one of our core key messages is be ready at any time because we believe that Jesus is coming soon. Soon asterisk. Soon, we don't know when that's gonna be, and we're gonna trust that whenever Jesus comes back is gonna be when in his time. It's not up to us to figure that out. What is up to us is to figure out, as Paul says here, what we can do with the time that we have.
Jesse Herford:And we might have a good, hopefully, all of us have a good 50, 60, 70 years on this planet. It'd be great to become centenarians. But if we don't, and we get to the end of our lives, what are we going to have to show for it? And so we could sit around, and I'm not criticizing our anonymous friend, and wish that things had turned out differently or wish that we had had opportunities that we hadn't, but I would say, what opportunities do you have right now? Because what is right now is way more important than what could have been in the past or what could be in the future because we can't control the past.
Jesse Herford:We can't control the future. But what we can control is what's right in front of us right now. So if you have a way to minister, to exercise your spiritual gifts, to be an apprentice to Jesus right now, how can you do that?
Zanita Fletcher:Awesome. Yeah. Mine is similar. I like how you spoke, Jesse, about the concept of all of us being ministers. You said that someone shared that with you.
Zanita Fletcher:Like, we're all ministers and we see individuals in the bible who were tent makers and they were also preaching the gospel. They were also ministering to the people. And not that we all have to be tentmakers, but I think we all can step into that calling of sharing the gospel with others or, like, showing God to others in whatever ways we can. And so I think for, yeah, the person who wrote us that article and for anyone else who is, I guess, wondering if they called and what they can do if they tried to work towards that calling but didn't find themselves in a pastoral position. I guess a good question to reflect on and ask yourself and something that I think I would like to do more is how can I step more into that calling even though I might not be exactly where I wanna be or exactly where I imagine myself being?
Zanita Fletcher:Like, what can I actually do that aligns with the way of Jesus? I think that's just a a good starting point that we can all go from.
Jarrod Stackelroth:Well, folks, you heard it here first. Let's go out this week and be more like Jesus. Thank you for joining us on Record Live. Thank you, Jesse, for your, insights, for your experience, and god bless in the journey ahead with little bubs on the way.
Jesse Herford:Thank you.
Jarrod Stackelroth:For the rest of you, we'll see you next week on Record Live.
