Why Minnesota?

May 23, 2012

One of the questions that I expected on my return to Minnesota after setting out with LA as a destination is “why didn’t you go all the way there?” It was a question that I had to deal with before I made the decision to go to Minnesota. I was half-way between the two places. There were a couple key factors that drove my decision

First, even before I reached Colorado, I recognized that the trip was not about my destination, but about my relationship with God. I needed to begin my post-graduate life by recognizing my role as both a child of God and a representative of His kingdom. I had been raised to serve, but needed to encounter love (1 Corinthians 13). After days of prayer, I recognized clearly that I did not have to do anything to make God happy with me. He accepted me as His child while I was still His enemy. Now that I am His child there is nothing I can possibly do to change that. Thus, I was completely free to do whatever I wanted with my life.

Second, even though I am completely free to do anything I want, my greatest desire is to know God. One of the best ways I have found to discover Him more fully is through loving and serving other people. For this reason, my call to pray and to love remained the same even after I realized my destination didn’t matter so much to God as my heart. He wanted to be my only focus, but as I ran after Him, I was distracted by the possibility of doing something for Him. Now I wanted to see Him do something through me as I sought to know Him in the way I lived my life every day.

Third, my life has always been about ideas. I love ideas and concepts, and watching them materialize. However, it is only recently that I have been given a love for the people that make these ideas worth anything. Travelling to California was about an idea. The idea was good, but I had no clue who the people were that I was going to serve, worship, and enjoy life with. At the same time, I knew several people in Minnesota who I desperately wanted to show the work that God was doing in my life. One direction was an idea, the other direction was an individual (specifically a church).

Fourth, along the way I received three challenges from the believers I spoke with. The first, was to determine where I was going, the second was to prepare for what I would do there, the third was to follow God wherever He would lead me. The first, I recognized was completely up to me. I have wanted and still hope to go to LA at some point in the future, but right now I have some things to do in Minnesota. The second was advice that I am currently following: developing a plan for when I do begin to minister in LA. The third was probably the most helpful advice for two reasons. It drew my heart in a direction that God had been calling me for some time, but it also removed the fear of people that has often kept me from responding to this call.

Fifth, I have always wondered why so many people who spend their lives serving the kingdom wind up with ruined families. One of the qualifications for a leader in the church is excellence in fatherhood. Christians often take Jesus call to love him and be willing to leave family behind as an excuse to avoid serving those closest to them (who are admittedly some of the most difficult to love). I do not want to be the person who succeeds at sharing God’s love with a world of nameless strangers, but fails to do the same to those that are most invested in my life. One cannot sacrifice love in the name of ministry. It is inconsistent to act in an unloving way toward one person in order act out of love for someone else. The tree cannot bear both good fruit and evil. Either I love God and all others, or I don’t. This was ultimately, my greatest reason for driving north instead of south when I left Colorado Springs.

Finally, I knew all along that the call to follow God would lead me to an unknown destination. I never expected it would be to Minnesota and struggled hard against my desire to start a fresh life in another state that I have always wanted to live in. However, as I came to understand God’s love for me more fully and the opportunities I would have to share that love with people I care about, I began to desire to go to Minnesota more strongly than I had ever desired not to go there. I realized that the journey I began in Indiana on May 10 would not simply end when I had reached a destination. It would continue every day that I turned my heart to seek God and offered my life to see how He would reveal Himself through me. So far, it has been an exciting adventure.