My wife Lorraine’s signature dish is Cottage Pie, which is great on the day but even better the next day, after the flavour has seeped through the (usually large part). Leftovers have their value, and not only in tasty leftover dishes!
While it’s true that “a rising tide floats all boats”. It’s true also that a falling tide leaves them stranded. Many Christians thought of themselves as ministry gifts during the charismatic renewal of the 1970s, only to find they weren’t when that spiritual tide receded and left them feeling stuck in the mud. Over the following years, many have wondered how it was they failed.
They didn’t. It’s just that they were not “set” in the church by Jesus as an apostle, prophet, pastor, evangelist, or teacher” (Ephesians 4:11). Not every Christian is a ministry gift (as distinct from having a spiritual gift), and if you are not then don’t try to be one because if you do, you’ll feel that you failed your Lord. If today’s low spiritual tide has left you feeling stranded or more bluntly stuck in the mud, please don’t lose heart.
The Lord remembers the good things you did in his name, and a new and greater incoming tide is about to lift you again — this time to the level of an experienced Christian and in the role of a church elder. Local churches will soon be packed again with new believers, and you will be much needed, so stop looking backward and start looking forward, and begin readying yourself for further service.
Jesus told the disciples to gather up the leftover loaves and fish from the miracle meal so “that nothing be lost”. So, stop thinking of yourself as just a leftover from a past event and instead prepare yourself to be a useful part in a future one. “Waste not” now, so that others will “want not” then.
If your teenage years were adventurous and even a bit on the wild side, then you might well have a call on your life to be an apostle of sorts: a “sent out” teacher” which I’ve been and still am. (I’ve not long returned from my fifty-first overseas mission). Scraps — even scrapes — from a somewhat dubious past will have made you more daring, and therefore useful, in the service of the Lord in bringing about breakthroughs.
God forgave your sins for Jesus’ sake, but it is unlikely that He will waste those not-in-themselves, past, pre-Christian experiences. Nor even those nasty ones learned during church ‘splits’.
Just a thought.