I recently read an article by pastor and writer Francis Frangiapane where he shared an experience from the early years of his ministry. He was a part of a group with which he was beginning to have serious questions about not only the doctrinal direction, but the behavior of some of the leaders. He met with the leadership to discuss the issues and with hopes of reaching a mutual reconciliation of it all. Instead, he was forced to resign his pastorate. He found himself without not only a ministry, but a home and income as well. He began what became a 3 year journey of going from what he felt were meaningless, unsatisfying, as well as low paying jobs. More, he was unable to carry out what he was sure was a call upon his life for full time service to the Lord. Pain, frustration, and misery were what marked his life.
In it, he constantly sought the Father for guidance, asking Him what he should do, what were the steps he needed to take to get back into ministry, back into a fulfilling life, back where he felt he belonged. Back to where he believed his only joy and well being could be found. God seemed to be silent on all of that, and though He worked in Frangiapane’s life to supply needs, and take care of he and his family, Frangiapane’s misery and frustration continued. He hated where he was at, and what he was doing. He felt like a second class child of God because of it all. He not only wanted out of it, but wanted to know what God wanted of him in all of this. One night, as he was at his altar of prayer before the Lord, God answered and said simply, “I want you to love Me where you’re at.” Simple yet profoundly powerful words. Words that I myself have struggled so many times to hear. Maybe you have as well. Maybe you are right now.
In our journey with Him, we can, very likely will, end up in places we don’t want to be. For me it was Charlottesville, Virginia back in 1989. I had left the ministry with the disintegration of my marriage, and ministry was what gave me my identity. If I wasn’t a pastor, just what was I? I had to get work, and that search led me to Charlottesville, working on a Coca-Cola truck as a deliveryman. It was the first job opportunity I had, and I had to take it. On the first day of work, at 6 am in the morning, I sat in the truck, in the dark, the sun not yet having risen, and cried out to God, “How did I get here?” Like Frangiapane, I hated where I was at, and what I was doing. Like Frangiapane, I stayed in that place for a long time.
God’s words to Frangiapane are His words to you and I as well. No matter where we are, no matter how far it is from where we want to be, He calls us to love Him from there, even when “there” is a place we would never have chosen to be. Love Him with not just an intellectual agreement, but with a wholehearted love that impacts and permeates our minds, emotions, and spirit. Love that fills us with the light of His joy even in the darkest of prisons. Love that instead of constantly seeking a way out, seeks instead a way to Him. Ever deeper into Him.
Frangiapane said that what he discovered was that God wasn’t interested in what he did for Him, but in what he was becoming in Him. He found that the Lord wanted him to love Him right where he was at, and know that He loved him for who he was, and was becoming, and not for what he did. Even in the seemingly most insignificant place, he mattered greatly to God. Though I didn’t know it, so did I in Charlottesville, and so do you, right now, regardless of where you are, and what you do. What we’re doing is not what matters most. It is what we’re becoming that does.
Jesus told Peter in John 21:18 that when he was old, “….others will direct you and take you where you don’t want to go.” It will be no different for us, as life will definitely take us places we don’t want to be. In all of it, He is there, working, molding…..loving us. We belong to Him, and not the circumstances around us. Where we are, or what we’re doing is not the final reality. It is what we’re becoming in Him….as we love Him….right where we are.
Blessings,
Pastor O
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