God broke all my dreams this year. Month after mouth, I watched years of invested energy and ministry accomplishments succumbing to hairline fractures by the very hand of God.
When you know your purpose for life is ministry, outreach and reflecting God’s character in seeking the lost- ministry can become the thought that follows your every breath. Ministry can become your identity and your reason for living. For the past 14 years, I knew all I wanted to be was an Ambassador for my Saviour. I made a commitment to God, that all my time, all my God-given gifts and my resources were going to be used to vindicate the goodness of my Father. All my energy would be invested in volunteering for my local church and the time and energy that was left would be put into my personal ministries. I would wake up to follow God’s calling and I would go to sleep knowing tomorrow was another day of surrendering to God’s leadership. But this year, God said, ‘no more’ and He took me off the ministry playing field and I ended up on the bench.
Emotional trauma from 2018 meant I started 2019 with an injury and I wasn’t playing at my ‘full potential’. But as I stubbornly tried to shake off the pain from 2018 without proper ‘spiritual rehabilitation’ and ‘emotional physiotherapy’, God cringed in fear as He watched and waited for more injuries in 2019. After carrying the 2018 injury through the beginning of 2019, in May God finally broke the first of the two dreams that sustained my spirituality enough to keep me walking in faith. Those dreams were the only thing that had kept me playing in the ministry field since 2018. With the first dream shattered, my ‘crutches’ of ministry were now unbalanced. Now, I was walking and playing using only one crutch. With one crutch, the pressure was back on the fracture and I painfully found out that I wasn’t strong enough to support my faith. In July, God lovingly asked me to give Him my other ‘ministry crutch’ and I instantly fell to the ground.
For four months I couldn’t get back up. For four months I couldn’t trust God. In 2019 I found out I had to deal with multiple fractures; from my childhood and my past, while simultaneously recovering from the fall of God telling me that my dream for ministry was not His dream. In 2019 I dragged myself on the ground to the sideline and pulled myself up on to the bench, understanding I can’t play the game of ministry while I’m carrying around brokenness and false dreams. Sometimes, our choices, changed circumstances and even our sins cause God to reluctantly ask us to give back our ministry team jersey; sometimes forever. Sometimes, we are graciously given our jersey back for the upcoming season. My calling to ministry was not given to me, but rather I gave it to myself and circumstances in 2019 verified that God no longer wanted ministry to be the reason for my existence.
As Christians, we’re all called to be disciples. We’re all called to ministry. But being a disciple and ministry is not a ‘one size fits all’ calling. Some people have been called to throw academics and career as far away from them as possible, while others are called to skillfully and creatively blend all three; academics, career AND ministry. This year God showed me that His calling was for shining my light again in the corporate sphere and not exclusively in my volunteer work for my church and my community work. In 2019 God called me back to scrambling to value the academics I’d thrown in the ‘ministry rubbish bin’. He called me back to finding validation for my life in a fancy piece of paper, signed by a mere human but He also welcomed me back on the ministry team.
After leaning on the ‘crutches’ of ministry for 14 years, 2019 was the year God let me trip over and fall on false hopes and dreams at the blessing of allowing me to see that I’d been playing on the wrong field this whole time. After 6 months of emotional and spiritual ‘rehabilitation’ and the restoring of my trust in God’s leading through ‘the process’, God has taken me off the bench and moved me to another ministry team. This time, I know I’ll be playing at my peak, with His anointing and with my true divine calling. The year that was, I painfully learnt what it meant to ‘trust in the Lord with all your heart’ and why we shouldn’t lean on our OWN hopes and dreams… because they’ll break you and put you on the bench while the game of life and saving souls, keeps playing on around you.
WRITER: Catalina Arevalo, Host and content creator of the CONNECTED Adventist Podcast