Summarizing The Essentials
The first essential is responding to God's calling. The chapter explicitly discusses the different
callings from God in one's life like salvation but more explicitly discusses the call to full-time or
vocational ministry. I also agree with how Early and Gutierrez discussed recognizing the call
over your life as a nudging or repetitive guidance in the direction and something others can
affirm within you. An important part that they included in knowing you are called was a sense of
completion, fulfillment, and joy when carrying out ministry. Having a sense of peace and
fulfillment when you are doing what the Lord has called you to do is a huge indicator of
affirmation. They followed the chapter up with questions on how to respond to the calling
realistically and ways to diagnose where the Lord has called us.
The second essential is living a life of prayer. This chapter discusses the importance of
prayer and examples of great leaders in the bible and the examples they set and how they relied
on and where men of prayer such as the apostles, Moses, Jesus, and timothy were. The chapter
discussed our need to be reliant on prayer and how we can always pray more. I agreed with this
chapter and loved the sentiment we are never too busy for prayer but too busy to not pray. It was
also very interesting to see the common denominator amongst such great leaders was their
dependency and consistent prayer life.
The third essential is maintaining an eternal perspective. The chapter is about not giving
up when ministry gets hard or is messy and doesn't fit into a perfect bubble. The text talks about
how many ministers and pastors begin the journey into ministry with a sense of eagerness and
excitement but eventually, that initial excitement wears off how we remain. We must keep an
eternal perspective of joining the Lord in His work and that ministry is a privilege. I truly agree
with the difficulty we can all naturally create when we try to carry out ministry in our strength or
even maintain this “perfectly polished” appearance of having it all together. Paul, for example,
experienced so many hardships and very legitimate reasons to quit ministry or stop the work The
Lord had called him to but he kept his eyes above and focused his ministry on Christ.
The fourth essential is refusing to coast. The chapter discussed how to move forward and
not remain stagnant but cultivate progress successfully. Stepping out and pursuing progress and
training ourselves to become more Christ-like. I agree with the idea of Godly discipline and
personal growth are solely our responsibility to cultivate. The process of preparing and
intentionally creating schedules and routines will set us up for success. I loved the plan of
preparing for success starting with creating goals and developing a plan that will intentionally
take us to our goals and cultivate a closer relationship with God.
The fifth essential is loving people. This chapter reflects what ministry is simply at its
core. Loving others isnt simply a goal to achieve but a commandment given by our savior. This
chapter walks through how scripture and Jesus himself demonstrated loving others. The main
gist was love is an active action not passive and is truly a supernatural demonstration of an
outpour or overflow of the love of Jesus. In our ministry, we have to rember that it isnt the race
who can obtain the most knowledge and simply hold it to maintain an intellectual superiority
rather than an active perusal of loving others intentionally and cultivating relationships. Often I
try to plan goals and events and view success and joy as dependent on actions and their outcomes
rather than taking time to step back and love others and for relationships that will take ministry
deeper and farther than I could ever possibly do alone. The Lord has called us to be in a world
and reach people not to be successful in the eyes of culture. Loving people is messy as we are all
broken and imperfect but the process of sanctification as we grow in the likeness of God should
be marked by how effectively we love others.
The sixth essential is living an uncompromising life. This chapter highlighted the mark of
a rich life of ministry is an uncompromised life. I often think about what actions I have to take
for me to please the Lord. How long do I have to read how, how many degrees, the depth of
theological understanding will be good enough? Through this reading, the Lord reviled He
simply requires our obedience and love. Remaining obedient and steadfast in the Lord even
when culture draws us to comprise what the Lord has called us to stand for is the mark of a
strong Godly man or woman. Living an uncompromisable life isnt easy to achieve on our own
but requires us to observe what we are consuming and who we surround ourselves with.
The seventh essential is loyalty to the truth. I completely agree with this essential. This
chapter discusses relying on the Lord as a supreme source of truth and discerning what others
believe and how to reach them by understanding their worldview and perspective. The
perspective of relative truth is commonly held by most people which allows us to create a
perspective of anything acceptable because it's our truth or socially acceptable at the time. This
chapter challenges that the word of God and His nature are the absolute sources of truth. The
truth from the word of God sets us free from all things that are enslaving us or causing us to
remain tied down. Tied down to the approval of others. Tied down to a culturally acceptable life.
Tied down to relevancy. The truth of the word of God sets us free.
The last essential is keeping the obedience bar high. I agree with this essential and it was
a great reminder. As those called to preach and teach we are told that we will be judged by a
higher standard and the best means of influence is example. Timothy writes “No one should
despise your youth; instead, you should be an example to the believers in speech, in conduct, in
love, in faith, in purity”. We should seek to glorify God through what he has called us to and
passionately.
Areas of Improvement
The two areas I struggle the most with is a life of prayer and maintaining an eternal focus. For
me it is so easy to forget to be committed to prayer and make it a first resort and go to option
instead of a last resort. Maintaining an eternal focus is the hardest for me to be diligent in. When
the world feels so broken and filled with caos or trials come my way I definitely struggle to see
the good or the end goal. It be so dificult to look at the see circomstances and trials and see how
the Lord is working in them.
Plan for Improvement
For improving my prayer life and cultivating and a life of prayer I want to set a specific location
and time where I can get in the Lords presence Jen Evangelista in her article in Grace in Color
states “One of the beautiful things about the privilege of communicating with our Creator God is
that we can do it anywhere, at any time. We do not need to be in a particular location, speak
special words or offer any rituals. However, sometimes that anywhere and any time turn into
nowhere and never. Our lives are busy.” The days are consistently too busy to not have God in
them a starting a day strong by beginning in prayer is a good place to start. My plan for
maintaining an eternal focus is have written goals of which the Lord has called me to accomplish
so when i lose focus I can refer back to the list and see and be remember. David Worcester writes
that we should maintain a focus on heaven and glorifying God rather than the struggles we are
currently facing we can have a hope in a perfect sinless future.
Works Cited
Worchester, David. “3 Ways to Live an Eternally Focused Life – Colossians 3.”
Davidworcester.net, 13 Oct. 2014, https://davidworcester.net/2014/10/11/3-ways-to-live-
an-eternally-focused-life-colossians-3/.
Evangelista, Jen. “Prayer: 12 Practical Ways to Improve Your Prayer Life.” Grace in
Color, 16 Apr. 2018, https://www.graceincolor.com/prayer-improve-your-prayer-life/.
Ben Gutierrez, “Keeping the Obedience Bar High,” in Everyday Ministry: Applying the
Christian Faith (B&H Academic, 2010), 1757.
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