(Reading Time: 4 minutes) I didn’t set down to write my blog yesterday like I normally would. Since Susan is away at the District Minister’s Wives Retreat, I took the opportunity to install some new kitchen cabinets around our stove and mount our microwave oven above it. I knew it would be a full day’s project and I thought it would be a nice surprise for Susan when she got home today. With moving electrical, adding supports in the wall for the new cabinets, and cleaning up my mess, it turned into a long day’s project indeed. However, it is done and Susan will be home this afternoon for inspection and final approval.
Throughout the day, instead of listening to worship music, I chose silence and spent my time talking to the Lord. I prayed over certain things in the church and in the lives of some of our people, but mostly just shared a heart of thankfulness for all the Lord has done for me. My mind was stirred about this when I heard Sunday night Pastor Robert Morris say he was grateful to the Lord because “he never got over being saved!”
While working on my project, I got to thinking about how much more satisfying it is to work with your hands than the things of ministry. I quickly stopped myself, realizing that the Lord could hear my thoughts. I apologized and told him that ministry is different. He asked me why? Then I found myself playing once again into the Lord’s hands as he began teaching me.
Yes, ministry is different. It’s a battle. It is work. It is heart wrenching and painful. Working on your home to make it better and doing something that pleases your wife brings you great joy. The Lord began to show me the difference in a way I had never thought of it before. Man was not designed for ministry. Taking it even further, man was not designed for war, or for employment, or for ruling over others, or any of the other things we admire men so much for in the world today. Man was designed for family. He was designed to care care of the needs of his wife and children. He was designed to work for himself—to directly apply his efforts to build a place for his family to dwell in safety and peace.
With that revelation, it hit me why hanging a cabinet on the wall was much more satisfying. It speaks to the true heart of God’s design for a man. God made a man for family. He finds his greatest joy in serving the family God has given him. Taking care of things around the house makes you feel complete. To see the admiration of your wife, as you provide for family needs, is the deepest joy you can feel as a man.
Whether than it feeling like a day of hard work, it felt like a day off. I spent 12 hours with God, my home, and my project for my wife. It made sense. Everything else will fade away. All the roles that man holds as important will one day come to an end. Yet, being a father and a husband are eternal adventures that satisfy the deepest part of what a man was created for. Goes to show you that we have a long way to go before we can firmly reestablish these truths in the men of our community.
Like Pastor Robert Morris said Sunday night on our video, “It’s time for the church to grow up.” Satisfaction is doing what God has designed us to do.
“God sets the solitary in families.”
Psalms 68:6