Why I Almost Gave Up the Ministry—and 3 Reasons Why I Didn’t

It was the fall of 2015 and I had never wept so incessantly before in my life. It was ridiculous and I knew it was. Yet grief comes. Moving sixteen hundred miles to run on empty was something I’d expected, but the experience of sorrow is different than the expectation of it. I spent a lot of time alone. I served in church, at school, and stitched together a smile. This was the call of God in that season.

I am sure you have had moments like these—perhaps months, or years as it was for me. Even if you are in a season of prosperity, there are times in the ministry when you fail or feel alone. This is reality.

Why did I almost give up the ministry? I never felt like enough. I was trying to do it on my own. This was pride at its finest.

If this sounds like you, perhaps what I learned can help you. These are the reasons I stayed.

1. Humility is about the source of ability.

In prayer, God reminded me how He touched Jeremiah’s mouth and put His words in it (Jeremiah 1:4-12). I realized I had made God’s calling about my words. I made it about my ability.

Listen well—it’s not about our preaching ability, social skills, age, gender, race, or personality. It’s not about us. If we could do it on our own, then we wouldn’t need God.

The source of ability is not us; it is the Lord.

2. Doing it on my own meant forsaking God.

God used Jeremiah to proclaim the Israelites had “forsaken me [God], the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13).

I had forsaken the source. I ran on empty all the time, thinking I needed to be perfect and do it on my own. Jesus said about the Spirit that “out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37-39). When I tried to make it happen, I forsook the flow of the Spirit.

I stopped forsaking God by giving Him control.

3. I gave God the glory instead of looking at my failures.

Paul called us jars of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7-12). He wanted us to realize our humble state means God gets all the glory. God is the one with the power, and it is made perfect in our weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Instead of beating myself up over failures (i.e. looking at myself), I began to speak in joy, “You are God and I am not. It’s not my work; it is Yours.”

True humility, then, produces freedom. I am simply a servant—God is in charge.

The Word promises us that there will be times of affliction and perplexity. Yet here is our hope—just as Jesus died that we might live, dying to ourselves allows life to flow through us. You must minister from the source of God; that is what sustains.