Ministry...

My daily devotion has had me reading in 2 Chronicles this past week or so.  I really get a kick out of chapter 7.  My charismatic discipleship early on gets real excited about the first 3 verses.  God's glory filling the temple, fire from heaven, people falling on their faces in awe.  I love that stuff.  But it is in verse 4 that the really good stuff happens.  Ya know the stuff that you go "wow, that would have been awesome!".  I'm kidding of course.  Let me share verses 4 and 5 with you.

4 Then the king and all the people offered sacrifice before the Lord.
5 King Solomon offered as a sacrifice 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep.  So the king and all the people dedicated the house of God.

That is a lot of animals going to the slaughter!  If PETA was around there would have been problems for sure.  Anyway, this passage has some real significance for anyone who is in ministry or feels called to the ministry.  Can you imagine having to slaughter all those animals?  The blood, guts and goo?  Your nice white robes and tassels all soaked on blood and entrails.  I think I might be sick by ox number 10,000 or so.

The point is, we love to see God pour out His glory in ways that remind us of how awesome and magnificent He is, but we forget the sacrifices and day to day offerings we are to be to Him.  Romans 12 anyone?  But serving Him becomes gooey, bloody, messing and sometimes just plain boring.  Come on be real, doesn't is get old sometimes?  I mean you are on sheep number 200, and you have 119,800 to go!  Any all you hear is more bleating of these 119,800.

Now of course, I am not talking about a very important part here.  Teamwork.  I know it wasn't only one priest doing all the work.  I bet is was every priest and every Levite in the the kingdom!  And if you read on to to verse 6, there was a band playing!  Yes, music to serve the Lord by.  In addition, the priest were excited about serving God.  Also, they did just see the God of all creation, rain fire and smoke down on the temple.  And it wasn't cause someone left the smoke machine running back stage!

Anyway, I love the encouragement I get from know that serving God is not all clean and neat.  It gets messy.  It gets loud, and dirty.  But you get to see God too.  I hope everyone gets to see God today...
happy serving my fellow Levites!