What Is My Ministry Calling: Part Five

8. The Primary Tool That God Will Uses To Enable Us To Discover Our Calling is Our Emotions. A while back my friend and co-author Frank made the above point while speaking in a church. Following the message a lady let me know that she was very upset. She was an adult teacher in the church and she always taught people that emotions were the “train’s caboose.” According to her the head is the “engine,” we should be sure we know ourselves, our abilities, our spiritual gifts, our experiences, and then make a rational decision about where we should pursue ministry. Of course to know of those things people needed to go through the class that she taught. I use to teach SHAPE workshops, it is an acronym created by Rick Warren for S = Spiritual Gift, H= Heart, A= Ability, P= Personality, E= Experiences, it was a vehicle for people to wrestle with one question, “If they could do anything for God in the next year, what would they do?” That is the “H,” in Heart, emphasis on heart…passion, but I have noticed that everyone that taught it after me put the emphasis on discovering their spiritual gift. Almost like the discovery of their gift would bring about some kind of Christian nirvana. It never does. People discovering their spiritual gift is a really good thing, the Bible tells us to make sure people are not uninformed of theirs, but without igniting their passion it just adds to our intellectual baggage. It creates a huge problem when people think that they have to jump through a bunch of intellectual hoops before they can know God’s leading. It makes people dependent on those who understand the hoops. It is what we call the Medicine Man or Witch Doctor factor. Medicine Men and Witch Doctors gain their power from knowing mysterious things about God that the average person doesn’t know. Could it be that the reason that God designed us to find our calling primarily through our emotions, i.e. our passions, is because we don’t need “religious power brokers” to help us understand our emotions. We know many Christians who are pursuing their calling. Some know their spiritual gift, or gifts, while others don’t. Some pondered their personality and or their abilities before they found their calling, others didn’t. But they all have one thing in common; they all know their passion.