As a pastor with over 25 years of experience in ministry, I am often asked by younger leaders for the single most important piece of advice I can offer. My answer is always the same: the greatest call on your life is not to ministry, but to intimacy with God.
Jesus has invited you into a profound love relationship with Himself. More important to Him than what He does through you is what He desires to do in you. Unfortunately, pride robs us of intimacy with God, often hindering the spiritual growth that occurs when we prioritize the Father’s internal work.
In the Gospels, Jesus modeled a life of total dependence on the Father. Everything He accomplished flowed from His deep connection to God, demonstrating the vital importance of seeking God in silence and solitude.
Now, he was much more than a model—infinitely more. He was our substitute. He’s the one who died for our sins, rose again from the dead. But it doesn’t change the fact that he modeled for us what it looks like to live in intimacy with the Father. So much so, that Jesus said, when you hear my words, it’s not my words. It’s the Father’s words in me.
And he’s invited us into that very same kind of relationship, where you and I now—through a love relationship with him—have been born again into his family, and we get to live our lives out of the overflow of a love relationship with him.
So the greatest thing you have in ministry is not your skill; it’s not your ability; it’s not your experience; it’s not even your education. It’s your own love relationship with Jesus.
But here’s what’s troubling for me: In ministry, it’s often our love for ministry that becomes the great love affair that woos us away from intimacy with Jesus.
Unfortunately I have a few friends who over the course of 25 years plus in ministry I’ve watched fall morally. And for every one of those men who walked through that moral failure, the testimony’s the same. They fell in love with ministry. They had a love affair with the ministry. Before they had an affair in ministry, they had an affair with the ministry that wooed them away from their love relationship with Jesus, and ultimately opened them up to every sin under heaven.
Jesus in John 15 said it very succinctly. He said, “I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Apart from Jesus, you and I have nothing. Apart from Jesus, you and I can do nothing.
But remember what Paul said, “Through Christ I can do all things” (Phil. 4:13). Christ in me is what ministry is really all about. So don’t forget, your primary call is not ministry; it’s intimacy with Jesus.
This article originally appeared on LifeWayVoices.com and is reposted here by permission.