The greatest danger to ministry is me (Pastor Todd Dugard).

That statement has stuck with me. The greatest danger to ministry is me, because there is always temptation to make ministry about me.

Or at the very least about how it affects me.

I have this horrible self-absorbed tendency to wonder about my needs, about how I feel, and about how I appear to others—even in the midst of ministry. It’s disgusting. I’ve struggled with this me-first mentality for as long as I can remember, from birth really. But it intensified in my twenties. It intensified when well-intended people cautioned me against the hardships of ministry life. They shone a light upon the unfair microscope that hovers over ministry families, clucked their tongues over the despair ahead of me, and they told me, at all costs, to protect myself.

Although they meant well, they set me on a path of me-focused thinking rooted in a belief that I deserved more than this unfair sacrifice.

It is a sin—yes, SIN—to allow ME to consume my thoughts. When I am full to the rim of myself there is no room for God, making it far too easy to twist the things I intend to do for the Lord until they serve me.

Far too easy.

One day the Lord is coming, and everything will burn but what was done in pure worship of Him (Pastor Todd Dugard).

Yikes.

It can be HARD to step out of the spotlight and into the shadows. It can be hard to invite Pure Light to burn away any lingering crumbs of self that remain in my service to Him. It is especially hard if I have built a life that thrives on the applause of the crowd instead of the approval of One.

But I’ve been learning to do just that. And I suspect that the difficulties that God chooses to allow in ministry, the very difficulties well-intended friends warned me of, have less to do fairness and more to do with the sifting of my heart. God is using the hardships and injustice of life to expose my sin and my heart. My pride, independence, and longing for control, to name a few.

Oh, how I need more of Christ and less of me. How I long for the day when the struggle within will cease and I will spend eternity in PURE WORSHIP of Him.