UNOH surrender conference (part 3 Darryl Gardner)

I love Daz, he is one of those amazing guys that lives as a very passionate, very male, very insane disciple of Jesus. He may not always say what you would expect, and will occasionally say things you don't expect, but he always tells it like it is, in a powerfully simple way.

He was talking this last weekend about sustainability. He talked about how the ideals are usually different from our reality, and the fact is we may never totally reach our ideals. When we start out in ministry we are often doing so with a lot of our own issues being the driving force, ie. our desire to feel good about helping people that get neglected or something of that nature. And we move on from there hopefully to become people that are commited to the task ie. committed to the poor. And hopefully we will move on to ministering out of our love for God.

He talked about the pitfalls in each place. How we eventually find that we do not find ultimate fulfillment of our own ego in ministry. We will eventually see that the task will never be completed and that others quit and leave us alone. We cannot minister forever with these as the basis of what we do. But eventually we must move towards our love of God being the more important of these.

Then he talked about these vultures :)

I didn't hear where they were from, nor what kind they were, but they gave an interesting picture of Christian ministry. These birds would find a feed and gorge themselves to the point of not being able to move very well. They were not able to fly, but would run and flap their wings often just winding up stumbling and falling. But eventually the air would catch their wings just right and they would lift, as they flapped and stuggled eventually they would hit updrafts and they would wind up soaring to the heights with almost no effort, being carried on the wind.

His point was this, we must wait on the Lord as we are exhausted from ministry, but it is not just standing still. We must move towards God, continuing to walk the walk. And then, somewhere in our struggles we bump into the Spirit of God that lifts us up. The struggle is what allows us to be ready for the up draft. DOesn't mean we earned the rest, nor does it mean that we even helped to get there. We were merely placing ourselves onto Gods hands, and he lifts us up. I have found this to be true in my life. Never really got out of my douldrums or depressions by sitting and waiting for something to happen.

the rev