Chasing your dreams III: Hello Fear (one more round)

I was quite miffed that I was. Seated in a friend’s Spartan living room, I was wracking my brain for the answer(s) to the question she just asked. “What would you do if you had one million dollars?” How do i explain this fire in my heart.

And right there is the heart of my quandary. When I was growing up choosing “full time” ministry was like the loftiest goal a Christian would have. Our scripture union heroes were those that had quit or passed over “lucrative” chances to serve God instead. That was true denial to self and true answering of the call of God.

Today it’s a different story. Men who chose the “ministry” are scrutinized more and those that blindly walk into a profession are only questioned if the number of zeros to their salary is requisite and if they are what figure is at the beginning. I do not know how many times I have been asked to make sure that ministry is really the path God has set for me.

I feel like a man stuck in a time warp of sorts. Here I was, in the prime of my life, in a game whose rules had been changed. I feel like I am taking part in a game with an outdated rule book as my guide and being given a thorough butt whooping.

The world and the church by extension applaud winners. Nobody remembers who comes second they say. If two people walk the same path and one succeeds and the other fails, well the one who succeeds is revolutionary while the loser was probably 'delusionary'…this was not his true calling.

You see failure(s) is no longer well received in today’s church either. It’s either condemned or soothed away with the message of grace. And as far as I saw it I was a failure. I was quitting a good job for ministry.

The response of the faithful to my decision to leave a “big” job in one of the leading corporations in town was nothing but confusing. I think part one of chasing your dream goes into detail of my fears and more but the one comment that stood out for me and today still rings in my ears was one made my a close friend. He said I was being lazy and did not want to work hard and was using church and ministry as an excuse.

That left me reeling both from the meaning of the statement and the person who had spoken. I am not sure I have truly fully recovered from that. It was the seed that I am now constantly fighting to uproot. It is the doubt that has become my proverbial thorn in the flesh.

You see if your dream was to be at the top of this or that corporation then today’s game is for you. But if your dream was “mother Theresa” in shape or form, you have  your work cut out for you because nothing about today’s world or church, in so much as I have experience it, is rarely rooting for you Unless of course you win.

When they do listen they want you to present them a clear “ministry plan” of how this is going to produce dividends (saved souls) at the end so their money can be well spent and every time this comes up, well how do you explain a desire to give yourself towards the discipling of people, the provision of a home, a place of comfort and refuge where the weak, tired, worn can come and receive some “chicken soup for their souls”.

Every time these issues come I say. “Hello fear, I have two fist, faith and a promise let’s do this cause backing down and backing out are not an option.”

Ding! Ding! Ding! I’m ready for one more round.

Chasing your dreams II: waking up to the dream

Now here I stood fresh out of my corporate job and absolutely no plan, except to trust God and see where that road led. 

I was excited. I felt liberated. This was one rat that had made it out of the rat race alive and in one peace. I felt like a prisoner who had just made a successful escape from a super max high security prison.

I had quit to follow my heart and do ministry. That right was the first obstacle. What was this ministry I wanted to do? You see I had made this move at a time when “ministry” had been demystified and so even you work was ministry. It was all about going out to the market place and living the gospel. Taking the Gospel to the people so to speak. And here I was doing the exact opposite.

I was undaunted. I chose to volunteer at my home church All Saints Cathedral Kampala while figured that out. I also started raising support which in this case was asking people for their hard earned cash to facilitate this ministry.

Nga Christians do not give, especially to ministries that cannot be quantified or where they have not benefitted or witnessed the “power” first hand. And here I was, green and bleak, a newbie, a fresher in this whole “ministry” business.

That was just one of my problems. I wondered what I would tell people when they asked why I had left the job the God had “blessed” me with as a reward for my years of faithful service. I honestly did not have an answer. All I knew was that like Jeremiah I had a fire in my bones. I thought that perhaps a scriptural analogy would suffice but nga Christians really carry out due diligence when it comes to separating them from their money.

So I went back to God, remember the advice of a good friend who was doing something similar to what I wanted to do. He told me, before you leave make sure you have promises from God about these things. In other words, get a promise from scripture to back up your call and ministry.

SO I went back to God.in the months leading up to my notice period elapsing I asked and asked and asked.

HE sent me to the story of Abraham.

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him….

One thing that really stood out was the portion “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. There are no assurance Just the command to leave all that was familiar and go “to the land I will show you” it does not get any more vague than that and scary.

Many people think that following God is about him showing you the whole map and telling you this is what will happen and how. But often it’s the command and the promise that keeps you.

The other thing I asked is God what shall I tell them. How shall I qualify all the crazy things I am sure you are going to make me do? I need some back up here.

He took me to the story of Moses.

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them? “God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

Two things happen here. God asserts Himself and He deputises his servant. Well here I am, God has sent me and God is who he is. Hey I don’t make the rules I just follow them.

He also reminded me of some instance in the past where I vowed to expend myself in doing his work and in return that He would expend himself making sure I was covered because poverty and I had parted ways and I was not going back.

So armed with nothing but A COMMAND and A PROMISE I set out to the ‘land’ He was sending me to. I an still Journeying.

Chasing Your Dreams Part I

This piece first published on Facebook  on Thursday, 29 July 2010 at 15:2 
I Hope to continue this walk from here.

Sweeping my sitting room floor this evening, or is it night; it was 11:45 pm, I mused at how much pleasure that single act brought me. In fact I had paused a series I was watching because I was overcome with the urge, so to speak, to clean my house and test my new broom.

I just love the way it sweeps and I love the way simple things now bring me joy. No longer do I have to pray for the joy of the Lord but now I take joy in the Lord and the things that He has made. Joy is no longer something that I have to search for in fact I find it in the most unusual places these days and mostly in the everyday things of life.
It’s funny how the little things bring out the best in you and you know what it’s also a good thing because these little things are all around me so I don’t have to search far for a smile.

I rewind back to the days when I seemingly had it all, a good job, a good pay chaque and with this a new freedom that even my lack of curfew could not bring. Man, I was “in things” but I was out of touch.

I hated my job, not because it was a bad job, heck I spent three years and nine month and an extra retake semester preparing for this. I chose journalism. I was made for this. I had all that people said it took, confidence, an eye for detail read critical thinking, I was good and English, literature, I was an avid reader and I was average with people. But for some reason Mondays seemed like another tool the devil was using to torture.

I was groggy right out of the stock and I knew it. Something just did not feel right, at least not the way I had expected and I did the obvious Christian thing, I prayed about it and put my back into it. But like a bad stain, the more I rubbed the worse it got and soon my work begun to reflect the death that I was feeling on the inside. 
I felt like every day I spent chasing the news I was losing billions of brain cells every day. Million, trillion little creative cells seemed to fall off like dandruff. I felt like I was doomed, sentence to a life of routine and…well whatever it was that I was living at that time.

I could not find solace in my secular friends the just said I was lazy and to an extent they were right. To my Christian friends, well to them it was all about attitude and praying or speaking positive things in my day. The only positive thing to the day was the fact that it would end I could go home and spent another restless night waiting for the next day.

But my life was not all drudgery and pain, in fact there were some pretty colorful things about them but sadly they had little to do with my life as a journalist or even getting stories into the paper. I enjoyed the times I finished a story and could go and hang in church for a few minutes. I enjoyed the books I bought with the money I earned and the ideas that swam around me head when my boss was not breathing down my neck. My job gave me the money but robbed me of the time.

It was then that a crazy notion hoped and skipped its way into my heart, why not quit it all and just do something you love? Why not just shout “screw you world” and run out and follow your dreams. But reason stepped right between me and this thought and said, 

“ What? Are you crazy? Do you know that this job pays the rent and buys you cloths and food and all this other stuff? It asked
“Heck it even allows you to do some ministry on the side” it’s said rolling its eyes and stood back with its hands on its hips.

Leaning forward and pointing a finger into my face, it lowered its voice and said, “ Do you know that that would mean you going back to your father’s house?
We all shivered at that thought.
Poking its head through the window, the journalism Angevil, that yellow eyed, red faced, off white cross between an angel and devil chipped in. 

“Do you know how many lives you could change? Think of it, we are the ones who keep everyone honest and bring all that filth into the light? Man we are engaged in a national duty. You don’t have to be in church to change lives? Boy gets back in here!” he motioned with his pen spiked fork.

Taking all this in, I thought for a moment. All that was said was true and made good sense. The idea of going back to live under my father roof terrified me. Id sooner lived under a bridge than done that. Journalism did do some good but what evil I had to be put through to do it, I was not willing to pay. 

What about the Christian folk and all their peer pressure? What would they say? What about my reputation for laziness and failure? Wouldn’t this just prove them right? But if I leave what shall I do, God whom shall I say sent me? These and thousand other questions filled my mind, they were so many I took me 2 months to tender my resignation and another month to serve out my notice period.

But there I was, free and a bird and as clueless as a deer caught in headlights. What was my next move and where would I go? I went where every sensible Christian would go, I went home, to my Father’s house.