Me and Wendell

Can I show you how this worked in my life? When God was trying to call me back into ministry, I remember going through this process. I was a believer, but I was out of the will of God. After several years, I had gotten to the place that I was quite unwilling to do what God wanted me to do. I had a plan for my own life, and, while I didn’t know for certain what God wanted me to do, I was pretty sure of what I was determined not to do. Willingness did not define my life.

But as I told you many times, God began to deal with my heart. Now, He didn’t at first start calling me back to full time ministry. Though that possibility always lurked in the background, I wasn’t ready to hear it. What God began to do was to create a hunger in my heart to be as close to Him as I used to be. Can I just stop right here and tell you that if you ever develop a very close relationship with God, it will ruin you. It’s like eating Edy’s Ice Cream. Once you’ve had it, everything else is just frozen milk!

God began to create a strong desire for that intimacy with Him that I used to have. And, of course, the only way to have that intimacy with Him is to surrender to Him . . . to become willing to allow Him to have His way in your heart. Finally, I knew I had to do something. The more I drew close to God, the more I became aware that He was calling me to do something.

Finally, I sought some help. I went to my pastor at that time, Wendel Walley. Wendel is a great man of God who really loves the Lord. I remember asking him to go to lunch with me one day. I had decided to just let it all hang out. I wanted to tell him all the things I’d been doing since leaving the ministry and about how cold my heart was, hoping that maybe he’d say, “Well, you just need to give up the thoughts of ever being in the ministry and just settle for being a good layman.” By the way, it would have served his self-interest to have told me that, since I was leading the music in his church. But that’s not what he said! He told me much the same thing that Eli told Samuel: When God calls you, you must say, “Speak, Lord for your servant is listening.”

That’s what I did, and that’s why I’m here. I want you to know that God calls those with willing hearts, and it could be that what you need to ask God for this morning is not what He wants you to do, but how you can develop a willing heart!