Recently, I was reminded of the lyrics to a popular song among Christian youth about twenty years ago. The song is titled “Thankful” by the —at the time— immensely popular band Caedmon’s Call. In the opening few lines, the songwriter muses about finding a box of letters while sifting through items that needed to be donated. As he stops to read the letters, he is reminded that many of the same things that he struggled with when the letters were written are still struggles for him at the moment. And, if I’m completely honest, that song resonates with me because, things that I struggled with all those years ago are still all too present in my life today. I felt much the same way when I came across the lyrics of a song that a friend and I wrote more than two decades ago while in college.
I’ve always loved music, and I have been drawn to the art form my entire life. Music can help us express the depths of our souls that mere words cannot. This is why the Psalms are often so painful, and I am thankful (no pun intended) that they are included in the inspired canon of Scripture, as to model for a healthy way of approaching God with our emotions. This brings me to the song lyrics that I found from my college days.
My friend Joey and I both loved music and playing guitar. He was more the poetic type, with a passion for writing songs, and I enjoyed creating tunes and melodies. So we would hang out, play guitar, and try to write songs together. I don’t remember all of the songs that we wrote, but one in particular stands out. We both, as most college-aged students, were struggling with the question “what should I do with my life?” For Joey and I we had already answered that question, or so we thought. Both of us expressed a call to Christian ministry and were actively pursuing it. Yet for two restless college kids, things were not progressing as fast as we had hoped, and so we sat down and wrote a song about our mutual struggle with a call to ministry. We wanted to discern whether our passion for ministry was of God or simply selfish ambition.
The lyrics are simple yet honest and raw. They stem from a sermon we both heard at a conference for college students on the topic of building God’s kingdom versus building our own. The sermon was based on the verse from the Sermon on the Mount, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt 6:33).
The lyrics express the desire of two twenty-year-old kids who desperately wanted to serve God. I don’t quite remember the entire tune, but the lyrics speak for themselves.
Why do I have to wait so long?
On the things you have for me?
Do I want something different
Than your will for me?
Lord, you’re all I will ever need.
Only in you, can I be complete.
Kingdoms, my kingdoms
I surrender all to my king
All I have and all I will ever be
I lay down at your feet.
It’s hard for me to understand
That I must wait on you.
When I’m ready to get started
With what you’ve called me to do!
Kingdoms, my kingdoms
I surrender all to my king
All I have and all I will ever be
I lay down at your feet.
If I’m being completely honest, things are not much different some two decades later. I still deeply wrestle with God‘s calling on my life. If you had told me twenty years ago that the path toward Christian ministry was long and arduous, I would have thought you were crazy. The examples I had from mentors and pastors in my life were simple and straightforward: First, finish college, then go to seminary, get married somewhere in there, and finally, get a job at a church. Simple, right? That is what I wanted to do with my life, and that is the path that I set out on some two decades ago. Yet that is not the path that God had for me.
After a few short years in different ministry roles, I left vocational Christian ministry. The past decade has been a struggle, painful at times, as I have continued to wrestle with God’s calling on my life. Looking back, I am thankful—again, no pun intended—for the journey. If I had stayed in the ministry role that I was in at the time, I may never have discovered the depths of the Christian tradition that I have come to love in the broadly Catholic, Anglican tradition.
Graciously, the Lord has given me a wonderful opportunity for ministry here at Coram Deo (fka Reading For The Glory). This has been an opportunity that I could not have appreciated twenty years ago. Even so, I still struggle, as the song says, surrendering my kingdoms to the Lord of kingdoms. The same old sins cling tighter than they should, the same worries and fears make me anxious. Instead of trusting Jesus my Good Shepherd, I run to other things to bring me fleeting comfort.
I’d be willing to bet that my story resonates with many of you as well.
Most of us, who have been redeemed by the grace of God, have a deep desire to serve Him. Each of us wrestles with whether that desire is of God or whether it comes from selfish ambition.
As the speaker at the conference reminded us back then, the way to distinguish this is to follow the invitation of Jesus to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matt 6:33). When we do that, when we truly seek his kingdom first, everything else in our lives falls into place.
Magna Dei Gloria
Photo Credit Unsplash.com
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