The Qualified

What do you say to a woman who just found out she has terminal cancer?  How do you respond when this woman is a complete stranger? How to you encourage when she begins opening up to you about her currently reality and the trauma from her past that has caused her to drift from God.  

This past Collide event I had a divine encounter on a carpet-worn step.  I noticed something in her face that bespoke her burden.  I sat down.  She told me a fraction of her story but the Spirit within me revealed that she was carrying much more. 

I knew she had fear and needed answers.  Was she going to be okay?   Inside I started to panic a bit—for how do you proclaim to a hurting woman that God is still good when He allows that impending diagnosis over your life? Especially when your own cancer story was early detection, outpatient surgery, and regular dermatology checks to make sure it hasn’t returned?  

The truth about ministry is that none of us are ever ready to collide with broken people but we are called to do it anyway.  Life is messy and human hearts are complex.  I don’t think it matters much what certifications you have hanging in your office.  Nothing prepares you for the stories of pain you may be asked to enter into.  

Being afraid is not an excuse to sit back and watch a hurting world when within you resides Hope. You see hope is not just an optimistic emotion.  It is a person named Jesus. 

We step into another’s pain by remembering our own and accessing the same hope that Jesus gave to us in our darkest hour.  Then we give it away.  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. (2 Corinthians 5:18-20)

You aren’t ready but God is making His appeal through you.  You are qualified because you are reconciled.  Once his enemy, now His daughter.  Once broken, now resorted.  Once shame-filled, now overflowing with joy and a peace that defies circumstances. One hidden, now God’s glory on full display.  This is what makes us able to carry the pain of others for a little while; He carried ours. On our behalf, Jesus took His stand bound to rough-hewn wood.  Jesus was the Light atop a hill called Calgary.  The story of the redeemed boils down to this:  He brought light into your dark places.  Now go shine it on someone else.  Now you are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. (Matthew 5:14).  Our light radiates and diffuses to others as we look to Hope embodied.  

Back to the stairs.  All I could offer was this: He was with me the entire time and He will be with you.  Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. (1 Corinthians 1:3-5.) 

We prayed, cried, and held each other.  His kingdom came down through a willingness to enter into someone else’s story, even without all the answers. Then came my favorite moment; I stood, took her hand, and lifted her off the stairs. 

This is what ministry is and you are qualified.  God has called you his ambassador so you have what it takes. Reach out your hand and lift up others with the comfort you have received.  You’re not a spectator.  Leverage your life.  Let God empower others through His victory in you.  “There are people whose lives are waiting on yours to come out of hiding”-Willow Weston

*If you would like more information on Collide ministries please visit https://wecollide.net