Ministry is not a title but a word, one that covers what we do in life for our Lord. Jesus not only saves but also baptizes those who are in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit then distributes spiritual gifts to them at will according to (but not limited to) the natural inclination of each.
Those who excel in spiritual gifts become “ministry gifts” — not a scriptural term but one that well describes a believer that has become so gifted in, for example, the gift of prophecy, that he or she becomes a prophet or a prophetess. The spiritual gift of prophecy has become so identified with the one who prophesies so fluently and with such accuracy that the gifted person becomes recognized by the church as a Ministry Gift.
However, we all have to begin somewhere, and in my case that was in a house in an outer suburb of Melbourne, Victoria. Lorraine and I had been driven there
by a couple not long after I had received a spiritual gift of healing in a meeting in the City of Melbourne. The preacher had been A C Valdez Junior, who was a preacher who was nationally-known in the USA back in the 1960s.
While worshipping with both hands raised high, I felt an unseen hand grasp my left hand (my stronger hand, since I am naturally left handed). I turned to Lorraine and whispered, “I can feel the hand of Jesus on my left hand!”
That supernatural incident was still in the front of my mind while praising God with people — all of them Christians — whom I’d not met. But a mature couple was there whom Lorraine had known during her years in The Salvation Army. The man had been an officer in the Army and his wife had held equal rank, until Jesus had baptized both in the Holy Spirit and were both asked to leave due to them having spoken in “other tongues”: languages that neither had learned. We — Lorraine and I — had both attended services in the Salvation Army, and so were well aware of that denomination’s rejection of spiritual gifts — especially the gift of speaking in tongues.
Suddenly I became aware of a feeling of compassion, a yearning, really, that had begun deep within me and was moving up through my chest and into my left arm and then my left hand (which was growing hotter by the moment). In that hand came a feeling of compassion that was beyond any I had known, one so sublime that I knew it could only be from God. On the face of the Salvation Army officer’s wife was a look of depression that was far deeper than any I had ever seen. So, I crossed the room and quietly asked him if he would mind if I prayed for her. He quickly agreed, and so I laid my left hand gently on her forehead.
When I did, every bit of that compassion flowed through that hand and into her head, and her face began to change then and there! I held my hand in place for a minute or two until the compassion of the Lord Jesus ebbed slowly into me and ceased.
And that was the moment, in that remote house in the hills northeast of Melbourne, that I was determined to experience that sublime feeling and that absolute compassion of the Lord Jesus for the low of heart and mind again and again for as long as I would live! That was my very first Memorable Moment in Ministry, and it was one that has never since been excelled anywhere in the world; the benchmark level of Christ’s compassion in my life and ministry.
Your first moment may come while ministering healing or when you first lead a repentant sinner to Jesus Christ. But the benchmark will not be how God used you but what he did for the one your hand touched and through which the love of Jesus flowed through you in compassion and with life-changing power.
All glory to God our Heavenly Father and to His risen and exalted Son, our Lord Jesus Christ!