I need to tell you where I am right now, not where I hope to be by the time you read this.
You may know my story. God called me to ministry in 2008, and I ran from that call for the better part of a decade. People told me before I ran and while I was running that God had His hand on me. In 2018, I finally stopped running. Since then, He has opened doors for me to preach in different churches. I'm working on my degree. I'm writing. All of that is His doing, not mine.
And I am still wearing the badge.
Let me be clear. I don't have a bad job. I enjoy it. But something has changed in me, and I can't pretend it hasn't. The call has grown heavier. Things people say and do on a shift used to roll right off me. Now they follow me home. God is doing something in my heart, and it keeps pressing, pushing, and stretching me to dig deeper and go further. Part of me desires that. Part of me doesn't. The twelve-hour shifts are long, and I don't get to study the way I want to. I want to do so much more for the kingdom, and I sense that now is not the time.
That is the pressure. Not a crisis. A weight I wake under every day.
I've been walking through the Gospel of Mark, and two chapters have been reading me as I read them.
In Mark 13, Jesus said no one knew the day or the hour of His return, "neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Mark 13:32, NKJV). Then He told them what to do in the meantime:
"It is like a man going to a far country, who left his house and gave authority to his servants, and to each his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to watch." — Mark 13:34, NKJV
Even the Son didn't manufacture an answer to "how long." He left that with the Father and gave His servants work to do while they wait. That convicts me. The shift, the classes, the writing, the invitations to preach: that is my work while the door stays shut. Waiting on God was never meant to be sitting still.
Then there is Gethsemane. Mark says Jesus "began to be troubled and deeply distressed" (Mark 14:33, NKJV), and He prayed:
"Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will." — Mark 14:36, NKJV
He asked plainly. The Father said no. Mark tells us He went back and "spoke the same words" (Mark 14:39, NKJV), with no new revelation and no breakthrough. Then He got up and walked into the hardest act of obedience in history. In that same garden, He told His sleeping friends, "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Mark 14:38, NKJV). That's my "I want it, and I don't" in one sentence.
So I won't force a door God hasn't opened. Jesus holds that key:
"He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens." — Revelation 3:7, NKJV
And Peter, the man who slept in that garden, later wrote:
"Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time." — 1 Peter 5:6, NKJV
Under. Not out from under. "Due time" is His clock, not mine. I can't promise you or myself when the door opens. I can tell you that shoving my way out from under His hand would mean stepping out from under the only covering I have.
But I have to be honest about the other side, too. Waiting can become a hiding place. "I'm waiting on God" and "I'm afraid" can wear the same uniform. Staying under His hand still means doing the work He's put in my hands today.
Jesus named the whole assignment in one line: "he who endures to the end shall be saved" (Mark 13:13, NKJV). The Greek word is hypomenō. It means to remain under. Not to escape the weight. Not to figure it out. To stay under it.
If you're carrying a call that hasn't arrived yet, a door that hasn't opened, or a stretch you didn't ask for, you're not alone, and you're not off track. Jesus carried the heaviest weight ever placed on a man, and He carried it while calling God Abba.
So pray it with me: not my will, but Yours. Then get up and do today's work.
Are you willing to remain under it?
Pastor Keith