Before you make those plans for the New Year …

Choosing your employment and where you will live are a couple of the biggest decisions you will make in your life. I’m working on both right now.

During this season in my life, I’m praying my way through a time of transition.

It’s interesting how easy people think transition should be for pastors. A part of it is simple: I want to go wherever God wants me to be, to do whatever He wants me to do, to be used by Him to His glory. That part is simple. But there’s a few more details to transition.

Even more interesting, though, is how many people who are not employed in “full-time ministry” think their process of making decisions about transitions is supposed to be different. But it’s not.

As Christians guided by the Bible, we see a teaching referred to as the “priesthood of all believers,” meaning that we are all ministers. All Christians are supposed to live their lives devoted to serving God. Some of us are called to leadership roles and are “set aside” for that purpose, but all of us are ministers for Christ.

Given that fact, the same decision-making process for transitions should be applied by all of us.

What does it take for the average Christian family to uproot and move, either near or far? Most of the time the only reason it happens is for employment or to be closer to family. Let me suggest there should be a primary reason for all of us: service to God.

As a pastor, I have seen families leave a local church because the husband or wife was offered a better paying job elsewhere. But is that where God wanted them to be? Sometimes the answer was yes. Sometimes the answer was that God had already planted them right where He wanted them, that God was blessing their ministry to Him right where they were and to move was not what God would want them to do … even if it meant passing up a better paying job.

Most people, including Christians, decide where they will live and serve based on the best employment opportunity for them. Making a decision like that leaves God out of the equation. It’s basically saying, “God, first I have to take care of my income, make sure I am meeting my needs the way I want and wherever that takes me I will then add in serving you.” Such thinking leaves us reliant — and focused — on ourselves.

If the Christian life is to be totally devoted to God, that process needs to be reversed. It needs to start with, and be entirely about, God’s call on our lives. What does He want us to do, and where does He want us to do it? Given that, we can then add in the important part of how we can make a living while serving God.

Most Christians don’t make decisions this way because it is radically, really living life devoted first to God. But that’s precisely what Jesus told us to do in Matthew 6:31-33, “31 “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ 32 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. 33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”

Before you set goals and make resolutions for a New Year, let me encourage you to give prayerful consideration to this question: Are you where you should be, doing what you should be doing in service to God? If not, what are you going to do about it? If so, I pray God’s richest blessings on your service in the coming year.

Scotty