Ministering to the Lord?

PASSAGE FOR THE DAY:
1 Now there were at Antioch, in the church that was there, prophets and teachers: Barnabas, and Simeon who was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. 2 While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” 3 Then, when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. (Acts 13:1-3, NASB)


REFLECTIONS:
There are two points that struck me when I read this passage, so I’ll take the second one first and the first one second (this is a biblical principle found in Matthew 20:16; “So the last shall be first, and the first last.”) Never mind, I digress!!  The first thing that I thought about was, “How long did it just take me to read this passage?”  Certainly less than a minute, right?  Well, how long did it actually take for these three verses to play-out in real time?  It could have been several days, or at a minimum, at least a day or so.  Why? Because it says, “…when they had fasted and prayed…”  This takes time; a typical fast in biblical terms is at least one day.  Therefore, when you read this brief, 3-verse passage, realize that it is a summation of events that took at a minimum a full day to play-out.  

The second point that jumped out at me was the phrase, “While they were ministering to the Lord…”  OK, what exactly does it mean to “minister to the Lord?”  Well, I did a little research and basically it means worshiping.  Have you ever thought of our worship time at church on Sunday morning as a time that WE are ministering to Jesus?  Yeah, me neither.  But that’s exactly what this passage is saying.  Our worship, whether individually, or collectively at church, is our way of ministering to our Lord.

Now, let’s put these two concepts together.  These guys were together worshiping.  And during this time of ministering to the Lord, He speaks back to them.  (Do YOU want to hear back from God on something? Try this; minister to the Lord and fast… that’s how these guys did it).  Anyway, they get this word from the Holy Spirit, so what do they do? They fast and pray!  When we read this it’s easy to think that all this took place in 5 minutes, but you don’t “fast” fast—it takes time.  I believe they heard from the Holy Spirit and spent at least a day or maybe more fasting and praying over this word from God.  Worship, ministering to the Lord, is something that we often rush through.  These early church founders knew the value in worshiping slowly, fasting slowly, and getting the direction of the Holy Spirit and acting on it slowly.  In our fast-paced, life-in-the-fast-lane world of today, we can really learn a lot about worshiping from looking closely at a passage that takes less than a minute to read.


POINT OF ACTION:
The next time you attend a Sunday service at church, think about the fact that our corporate worship is our way to minister to the Lord.  Do it slowly and see if you don’t hear from the Holy Spirit yourself!!  


WHO AM I?
You know, I ask myself that very same question sometimes: Who am I?  Sorry, I digress again.  I’m Alan Wassel.  I’ve run out of pictures so I’ll just attach this one again.  No, I didn’t dive off the rock into the ocean; I may be foolish at times, but I’m not crazy!