That dream really didn't pan out. You see, I wasn't any good at baseball.
And so, I started collecting some more...realistic dreams. But they were dreams nonetheless. I thought for a while I would be a mathematician. I loved math and even did extra homework problems in my spare time. It seemed like a logical choice. I also toyed with the idea of being an attorney, or even a math teacher. Those seemed like things that would work out fine, given my grades and my love of school.
The last thing I ever thought I'd be was a pastor.
Humanly speaking, I don't think that it's overstating the case to say that nothing, nothing in my life or my abilities prepared me to be a pastor or pointed in that direction. I had no interest in Jesus until I was in college, and I never really spent much time in church growing up. I have always been terrified of doing anything in front of a crowd. I was a terrible public speaker in high school and college, and I hated giving speeches. And though I've taken piano lessons since the age of four and studied classical and jazz piano in college, I have always avoided every opportunity to play in public for one simple reason: I get so worked up that I almost throw up and invariably do not play very well. When I played the piano for a spell in our college ministry's worship team, every Sunday, I was filled with anxiety. So for me to be a pastor who preaches and teaches? In front of real people? Anyone who knew me would have laughed at that.
I do confess that in high school I was a captain on my soccer team and an officer on our student council. At first glance, that might have some promise of preparing me for pastoral leadership. But my greatest talent as a captain was yelling at my own players (and getting into fights with them), and as our student body vice president, my position was more often put to use as an excuse to ditch class for official "student council business" than it was to serve others. Character and putting others first was anything but a strong suit for me.
But God doesn't always give us jobs that we are humanly prepared to do.
That's not to say that God doesn't wire us in certain ways or give us talents which we later find out line up exactly for the life he would lead us to. But I wonder if perhaps we are so obsessed with what our gifts and talents will help us become--think of scores of young athletes staking their whole lives on the fact that they have a mean fast ball--that we forget it is not our talents that determine our course, but rather God, who holds our lives in his hands. Think of Moses who had a lisp, David who was too young, or Paul, who was the best Jesus-hater in the land.
It may be that God is calling you to something that you are completely and utterly unprepared for. In fact, I would go so far to say that if you really desire to be used by God, there will most certainly come a day when after all your training, after you have exhausted your intellect, talent, and wit, you will finally understand that you--on your own--are totally incapable of doing what God has led you to do. And when you finally find yourself in that place, only then will you be able to submit yourself completely to God and what he has asked you to do. It's very likely that should you finally find yourself in that place, that will be the time when you will feel like you are finally doing the very thing God has you on this Earth to do. And that is a beautiful place to be.
