Читать книгу How To Build A Winning Team. Serving God Together - Маттс-Ола Исхоел - Страница 4

At the very end of May 1988, I mounted my motorcycle and after two wonderful years at the Bible School in Uppsala, I set off toward my hometown in Norway. The 700 km trip was a sheer joy. As I made my way through Swedish forests and Norwegian mountain plateaus, I had so much to be thankful for. The Bible School had given me an entirely new start in life, and I had accepted a calling from my church to begin working as a youth pastor.

I was very eager to get started. I knew I was inexperienced, but did not think so much about that. The youth group was not so big, and I trusted that God would lead me. But little did I know about what was waiting for me.

The church I belonged to was not very big, but it was very influential. For years it had been one of the centers of the Charismatic revival that swept through Scandinavia during the 1980s. The church arranged several charismatic conferences every year. In the beginning people came from all over Norway to these conferences, but soon they started to come also from other countries.

The senior pastor of the church was a national authority, and one of the most known preachers in the country. But very unexpectedly, because of personal problems he left his position more or less at the same time I arrived home from Uppsala. So when I came, the church was quite bewildered because the senior pastor was gone. Then the board of elders gathered, and I was invited to join. In this meeting the leader of the board looked at me and said something like this: “We do not have a pastor, but you Matts-Ola have been in Bible School. Now you have to take over the spiritual leadership of the church.”

I almost fainted. This was like a bolt from heaven. Churches all over Norway looked to this congregation for inspiration, and I was without any experience as a pastor. I had prepared to work with the youth, but now I was additionally supposed to preach every Sunday and plan the further development of the whole work. I truly felt like David standing in front of Goliath.

Well, what should I do? The challenge seemed overwhelming. To lead a church with a national influence and to start preaching to a congregation that for years had been listening to one of the best preachers I knew, was more than I ever had thought of. But this is very often the way God calls a man. The task is so much bigger than us, that either we turn away, or we completely surrender ourselves to God’s grace.

I chose to throw myself on God, and I told the church I was willing to take on whatever responsibility they wanted to give me. My helplessness drove me into the prayer chamber, and there I found the confidence I needed. The Holy Spirit started to guide me step by step. I felt an amazing joy in what I was doing, and I discovered that I actually could cope with the responsibility I had been given. Some very joyful and fruitful years followed, and I learned a lesson for life: When God calls, don’t look at yourself – look at Him who gave the calling!