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| Photo while delivering my honors' speech |
One of the things that I battled on my way to being a follower of Christ is “idleness”. It was indeed very hard to keep yourself on the go when you have been used to not doing anything or when you were used to doing only the things that you like doing.
I didn’t like making friends before because I have this superiority syndrome. I didn’t like talking to people who doesn’t speak “my language”. So you can hardly imagine the struggle that I have to go through being a disciple and being a leader.
When I started my PEPSOLs, my life turned upside down. The PEPSOLs took me into a lot of metamorphosis. My journey is indeed a life-changing one that you can hardly see my old me except of course by the way I speak.
From this journey, I realized so many things about being a Christian and why some Christians give a negative impression about the G12 vision. I may make some of you raise their eyebrows but I’d say it anyway because it may help all of us re-assess our calling and balance our priorities.
We accepted Christ. Fact. We became a disciple. Double fact. Some of us lost focus on where they are planted and made their life unbalanced by being too pre occupied by their “ministry work.” We deny this fact. But this denied fact is what other people even our fellow Christians criticize us for.
Do you not wonder why some of your parents are negative about you attending our church activities? Do you wonder why your bosses at work gave you memos or dis allow you from attending church activities? It may not be true to all but it may be true to some. The reason maybe is that you forget to give your 100% best at school or at work, say you miss attending a school meeting because it coincides with your cell group or you may have turned down your boss’ duty assignment because you need to attend the encounter week.
We can be more effective G12 leaders if we know how to balance our ministry work, personal life activities and work or studies. If we are able to do that, then we can be more efficient and we can help alleviate negative thoughts about the G12 vision.If you’re a student, you must prove your parents, teachers and friends that you excel in your studies while being full time for God’s ministry. Because being a full time Christian doesn’t mean that we need to drop from our classes to be disciple or to disciple people. That would be a wrong testimony of our calling.
If we are employed, then we should prove our bosses that we can excel in our chosen fields while doing God’s ministry. If we can do that, then many people will be more encouraged to understand what we do, or better, we may even encourage them to accept Jesus and embrace the G12 vision.Apostle Paul made it clear to us that we should continue working or doing our individual tasks in addition to doing ministry work. God will not allow us to be teachers, engineers or doctors if He just want all of us to “preach”, instead, God made us teachers, engineers or architects in order for us to make use of our education to spread the word to as many people as we can. Let us refrain from saying “I’ll quit working and focus on finding and taking care of my 12 disciples” because that will be “idleness”. How will you support your needs? How will you be of financial help to your disciples? How can you be of inspiration to “busy” people who as they have no time for doing ministry work.
I am not going to glorify myself because I acknowledge the fact that it is only and I say only by His grace that I have work and I have disciples to focus myself with. But I am here to testify to each and every one of us that we can be full-time with our work and full time with our ministry. Yes it is said that we cannot serve two masters at the same time. And I never said that work and ministry are the “masters” that we need to choose from. But we can give our 100% service when we are at work or at school and give our 100% service to God anywhere and anytime. We just have to be sensitive to the call.
Let us refrain from giving our excuses that “as long as I am doing God’s ministry, I do not care if I flunk my grades, anger my parents, or if I lose my job”. God wants us to excel and give Him an excellent return of investment by being fruitful to the place where He planted us and be fruitful leaders for His church.
It is equally idleness to make our work or studies an excuse for us not to attend cell group meetings and PEPSOLs. We need to equip ourselves with Biblical truth and spiritual wisdom in order for us to be credible preachers of God's words.
There is just one solution to our struggles: TIME MANAGEMENT. Jesus and His disciples have their jobs while doing their ministries. Apostle Paul and his disciples as well made it clear that it is unrightful for us to eat what we did not toil for. So students, never abuse the goodness of your classmates or disciples nor give them a lame excuse to allow you to copy their homework or ask them to do your projects because you are busy with your disciples. Young professionals/new graduates, never abuse the goodness of your parents still supporting you by giving them the excuse that you are busy with your ministry so do you do not have time to find a job. And to everyone of us, the 24-hr time is enough for us to work and do ministry and enjoy our personal time. We just need to learn to manage our time well.
And so my SOL3 is done; I am ready to minister even to the people who doesn’t speak my language at the same time, be the mother of my beautiful kids, and be a full time school principal. Let us continue to excel for what we do and who we are is the testimony that our future disciples will look for and follow us to. Let us not give a shoddy return of investment for our God is not a mediocre God, our God is the Almighty, indescribable and immeasurable God.
