Is God Holding Back Your Dreams of Ministering to the Sick?
Jack and Acie Uker pastored a very small church in Zilch City, Nebraska. Jack dreamed of someday laying hands on thousands of sick people, but it was hard to lay hands on kilopersons when his Prayery Church could only hold 50 people and most of his seats were empty on Sunday morning. No one seemed to pay any attention to him, or even to his town, which was a real-life reflection of a tourism slogan Nebraska used: “There’s nothing to do here.”
But the time came when Jack was at a ministers’ meeting and a prophet spoke. He suddenly singled out Jack and Acie and told all the other ministers there that the LORD said that they should all invite Jack and Acie to their churches and turn them loose to do their thing.
Jack’s imagination started going wild. He could see flight disruptions coming when he got on airplanes and all his social media followers recognized him and started yelling “Hi, Jack!” He foresaw the need for his own jet, and then his own airport to accommodate all the air traffic that would be coming to Zilch City as people came from everywhere to get Jack and Acie to lay hands on them. He foresaw their picture on the cover of a Christian magazine with the caption “Jack and Acie Uker – King and Queen of Divine Healing!”
Suddenly a loud noise blared and the walls of the building where the ministers’ meeting was being held dissolved into something else – Jack’s bedroom! His alarm had gone off.
Jack was suddenly back in reality. He was the unknown pastor of an unknown church in an area whose only significant landmark was a replica of Stonehenge built using old cars. Half of his tiny congregation was the Doucy family, which he had married into. (Acie’s dad was obviously one of those people who think it’s funny to give your kids names like Justin Case, Robin Banks, Jack Tupp or Barb Dwyer.) And Jack wondered…was God holding back his dreams of laying hands on the sick? Was God keeping him in a small place for some reason?
The devil came along to assure Jack that the reason why he was out just west of nowhere was that he was a ministerial flunkie. The devil explained that the GOOD preachers get to minister in big cities and have big TV and internet followings, while the CRUMMY preachers are sent to remote towns where they at least won’t do much damage. The devil went on to explain that people in big cities were obviously more important to God than people in country towns, because if they were all the same, God would send some people with strong giftings to country towns as well as cities. The devil concluded that Jack was never going to be promoted. He would have to preach to his small crowd every week and God’s only word to him would be, “Go back, Jack, do it again.”
Thus, Jack became the umpteen thousandth preacher to wonder, “Is GOD holding me back?” And you may have wondered the same thing. If you have, read on!
Calling vs. Separation
The first question to consider is whether you have been CALLED but not SEPARATED. There will be a time between the point where you know that God has CALLED you and the time that God actually SEPARATES you to do something. This is evident from the following verse:
Acts 13:2:
As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.
They were already CALLED, but now God was SEPARATING them. If you are called, but you have not yet reached the point where you have been separated to your calling, you would be mistaken to launch out yourself to try to make your calling happen. If it is time for you to be separated to your calling, the Holy Spirit will bear witness of that with other people.
You can lay hands on the sick without being separated or even called to a certain ministry office. You can lay hands on the sick as a believer whether you have any calling to the ministry or not, let alone whether you’ve been separated to stand in a ministry office. But it doesn’t mean that you can quit your job tomorrow and just minister to the sick full time.
If you stay faithful to God to serve where you are, the day will come when God will separate you if He has called you. It would be senseless for God to call you to do something and then NEVER let you do it. However, this “called but not yet separated” phase typically lasts a lot longer than you think it should! During this time, God WOULD hold you back from doing what He has not yet separated you to do. The key is to stay faithful where you are.
Are You into Pride?
Now, if you HAVE been separated already, the next question is whether you have gotten into pride. Pride WILL cause God to actively oppose your ministerial progress.
James 4:6:
But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
1 Peter 5:5:
Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.
As you can see from the verses above, God will actively resist you if you are proud. So if you are proud, YES, God is holding back your ministry. But if you’re not proud, you should expect God to lift you up and promote you in due season. Due season may not come when YOU think it’s due – but it will ALWAYS come if you stay humble and obedient, no matter what it looks like or how long you’ve been waiting.
Galatians 6:9:
And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
Ecclesiastes 3:1:
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A PROUD person is anxious to have the microphone. A PROUD person is always thinking how he could do a better job than the actual speaker. A HUMBLE person is interested in how he can SERVE other people – in whatever capacity is needed at the time. A HUMBLE person can learn from other speakers. A PROUD person is always handing out business cards and behaving more like a fisher of preaching invitations than a fisher of men. A HUMBLE person is willing to let GOD raise up opportunities, and in the meantime, he is out there doing the work of the ministry whether anyone gives him any recognition for it or not.
Jack was sure that he should be “promoted” at any time to pastor a church in the other end of the state in a big city whose name used to be yelled when a certain person was manning a football team. He often found himself sulking that the day had not yet come, and the more he sulked, the more depressed he got. He tried setting up some websites, only to find that there were many other ministry websites out there and he was lost in the shuffle. Jack grew more and more despondent.
Legitimate Callings to Rural Areas
God does not forsake people who live out in the middle of nowhere. Some men are CALLED to serve in such areas, and it doesn’t mean that the small church is just a stepping stone to a bigger city where higher pay, bigger churches and greater recognition await. Everyone who obeys God will get the same reward in heaven. No one will be rewarded for the size of his congregation or the size of the city where it was! If that were the case, God would be unfair because the deck would be stacked against small-town preachers.
Rather than working on getting INVITES or working on getting POPULAR, you would be better off working on getting GOOD! The better your ministry is, the more people you will help. There have been cases where some churches in rural areas that were really GOOD ended up with more people attending than the town’s population! But that won’t happen by sulking or wishing it would happen. You’ll need to work on your walk with the Holy Spirit and your knowledge of the Word. You’ll need both if you want to make it in the long run.
If God really showed you a ministry to more people, follow His leadings and He will eventually bring it to pass if you’re humble and obedient. However, NEVER gauge your success by your crowd size. That’s dangerous and foolish. Your success is measured only by whether you are doing what God called you to do. Make that your only yardstick.
Jack had no support system because of what happened when he REALLY went to ministers’ conferences. The questions he was asked were guaranteed to be (1) “What’s your name?” (2) “Where’s your church?” (3) “How many people do you have in your church?” At that point, the person asking would say, “Oh, OK, we’ll give you the bottom spot on the Ministerial Totem Pole at this conference because we all have more people in our churches than you have.” Well, they didn’t actually come out and SAY that, but their words and actions proved it anyway. Jack felt like a total loser. He cringed every time he mentioned his average attendance on Sunday morning. Sadly, he never found out that not every ministerial association acts that way. (The one I’m in doesn’t.) He also never found out that most of the other pastors were citing the number of names on their membership rolls, which could include inactive or even deceased people (until someone figured out that they were deceased, which was hard because some of the live people on their membership rolls hadn’t been to church for two years), and they counted pregnant women as two people (which was technically true) – things that Jack had too much integrity to do. So Jack stopped going to the meetings because he felt worse when he left than when he arrived.
By the way, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. First, there really IS a Carhenge. Second, the events in the second paragraph of this story have probably been a private fantasy for more than a few aspiring preachers, but they actually HAPPENED to me and my wife! Never assume that anything is impossible when you’re following the Lord! With Him, real life is even more interesting than anything you could make up. And be sure that if God decides it’s time for you to have some doors open, they can open faster than you could imagine if it’s really God opening the doors. Remember, Jesus did NO MINISTRY for the first 30 years or so of His life! All the miracles He did were in a fairly short period. When GOD wants to blow open doors, He can make things happen very quickly – if you’re ready.
If you’re ready for something, God has no reason to hold you back. I think the truth is that too often we hold OURSELVES back because we’re not really giving ourselves totally to our callings.
1 Timothy 4:15:
Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all.
The more seriously you pursue your calling, the sooner you will get there. It isn’t all up to God or even mostly up to God. We need to “take heed” that we fulfill our ministry!
Colossians 4:17:
And say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it.
If you’re serious, go after it! But don’t think that “going after it” means hounding pastors you’ve never met to have you in. Most invites will be born out of existing relationships and good personal references from other people who have seen you in action.
Sadly, Jack made the mistake of just sitting around watching worldly TV programs with Acie every night. He never did anything significant to improve his Christian walk, and he never learned to control his flesh the way he needed to do to become successful. Instead, he based all his plans for future growth on the premise that a great revival would just fall on his church anyway soon because a prophet had said, “Surely Zilch City will be ‘ground zero’ for a great revival, and people will come in great planes to the Great Plains to partake of it.” So he figured that he could just keep living the way he was, and eventually this mammoth revival would just fall out of the sky as the prophet said that it would. But it never did. If you’re going to base your ministry on prophecy, make sure that it’s the “more sure word of prophecy” – the Bible (2 Peter 1:19)!