I am fortunate to be part of a pastoral team that leads a worship service for a group of mostly homeless people in the city where I live.  We started this ministry a little over a year ago now.  While we have had some great moments of encouragement, so often we feel that for every step we take forward, we take two steps backwards.  For one thing, our community is incredibly transitory.  As soon as we start really building a relationship with someone and see them begin to grow, circumstances change in their lives and they are gone.  Sometimes for good reasons, but just as often for relapses or tragedies.  All the time and effort we spend trying to build relationships with someone and disciple them and then they’re simply gone.   But there are other challenges as well.  Many of our friends are suffering from severe mental illness or addiction.  Time and time again we have seen them make so much progress only to succumb to their addictions, or to be pulled back down into the darkness of their mental illness.  And then there’s the systemic challenges people face as they try to get back on their feet.  We have seen too many examples of people doing all the right things to get back to a path of self-sufficiency, only to be taken advantage of by people in the community who thrive on taking advantage of the poor and marginalized.

In the midst of these struggles, you can feel so defeated, so hopeless.  You can look back at what you have been doing over the last week, month, or year and question whether or not you did anything, whether or not anything you did made a difference in someone’s life.  I have seen too many people, including myself at times, sink into a despair that leads you to want to give up.  But fortunately, by God’s grace, there are also stories of hope.  To respect their privacy, I won’t go into  details, but I have had the opportunity to see true change take place.  We know that when anyone becomes a child of God, a miracle has happened.  That is true whether you have been homeless on the streets as an addict or living as a seemingly moral-upright person in the suburbs.  But, when God transforms someone’s life that the world (and often even the church) would see as beyond hope, it reminds us of the reality of the power of God to redeem broken and hurting people and that no one, is beyond the scope of God’s love and forgiveness.

I have often considered how to stay motivated to continue on in ministry, particularly in ministry where “results” seem hard to come by.  I think the answer lies in the same good news that has the power to move a person out of the dominion of darkness and into the Kingdom of Christ.  As someone who has been redeemed and adopted as God’s child, who has every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus, we are free to serve without needing anything in return.  We also are free from the guilt and pressure of needing to change people, because we know that’s impossible.  We know that people can only be changed by the Spirit of God working on their hearts.  The pressure for results is gone.  And in addition to all of that, we know that every time we serve someone who gives us nothing in return, every time we trust someone that ends up betraying us, every time we get taken advantage of for our generosity, we are testifying to our Savior who gave everything for a world who rejected Him and nailed him to a cross.