the Christian calling

Welcome to this week’s blog as we close out the month of March and enter into April.  Hopefully, your March went out like a lamb, no April fool.  The Red Roof Church of Bulverde, Texas would like to extend to you springtime blessings and greetings.  I’m Lee Harder, the senior pastor at St. Paul, having the pleasure of sharing some thoughts with you.  I’d like to personally invite you to join us for worship every Sunday morning at 8:30AM or at 10:45AM.  I promise it is worship where God’s Word is Heard every week  —  no fooling.

I’ve got to be one of the luckiest people there is.  As a pastor, my occupation goes hand in hand with my vocation as a Christian and I get paid for it besides.  That should be enough blessing for anyone, but I have been given an extra dose.  I love doing what I do and can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing.

During my life, I’ve had to do a fair number of jobs that haven’t exactly been a joy  —  road construction, janitorial work in equipment companies and churches, and sales to name a few.  However, when I got to be a pastor all that changed.  Preaching, teaching (even hormonal teenagers), and sharing my love for Christ is what I love doing more than anything else.  Retire?  I’ll do this as long as the good Lord allows me the strength and health to do it and a community of believers, like the disciples of the Red Roof Church, are willing to put up with me (which I hope is for a long time in both cases).

Not all of us have a job that we love.  Some work at jobs that must be worked to pay the bills and we just do what we have to do.  For those who believe in Jesus Christ, we do have a vocation (a calling from God) that we do love.    Because of that, even a job that we have to do and maybe don’t like as much as we could still gives us the opportunity to show and share our love for
 Christ.  Our call from God is to share the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.  That doesn’t mean we have to be preachers (A good thing since I don’t need more competitors). It does mean that the words we speak, the actions we perform, the compassion, kindness and understanding we show to others gives testimony to our faith in Christ.  They see Jesus in us  —  or they don’t  —  it works either way.

As our Lenten journey is winding down, I hope you have had the chance to build a deeper, fuller, more loving relationship with our Lord.  Lent is not just about seeing ourselves for who we are as sinners.  More important is our desire to repent of our sins, change the way we live, and draw closer to the love of God by transforming our lives to meet with His desire for us.  We have the example of Christ to follow and the strength of the Spirit to guide us in that process.

We might discover that we take a whole lot more joy in life in whatever we’re doing when we are more in line with God’s expectations for us.
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And those are my thoughts.
God bless and have a great week.
Pastor Lee