525,600 Minutes (Ministry)

That song from "Rent" is running through my mind today (and now yours, too!)--and I'm just considering how I spent the 525,600 minutes of 2009 as it pertains to ministry outside my family--I'll do my family assessment over on our family blog. So was the Kingdom advanced in the way I spent my 525,600 minutes? At all?

I invited people to church, but they never came. I didn't lead anyone to Christ outside my family. But I was very intentional. I used phone calls, emails, Facebook, and these blogs to speak words of encouragement and truth over believers and those who have not yet chosen to follow. I prayed the Lord would show me who needed a word of blessing, and then I spoke it. I asked who needed a word of truth, and then I spoke it. And I asked the Lord to multiply my offerings in all of this. But the hard thing about this is that, at the end of the year when I am trying to see what the worth of this is, it's kind of hard to even know. It's not something that can be measured, I guess--at least not by me.

Maybe you're like me and can feel discouraged if this year came and went, and nobody decided to come to church with you, and you didn't lead anyone to Christ. But that doesn't mean that Kingdom stuff isn't happening.

I will say that 2009 was the year that I became reacquainted with my Bible and fell in love with the Word in a new way. And I know that is priceless. I am equipped with truth in a way I wasn't a year ago, and hopefully I can say the same a year from now, too--that I will have hidden even more away in my heart, and that I will have shared it with others, too.


"525,600 minutes...525,000 journeys to plan.
525,600 minutes, how do you measure the life of a woman or a man?
IN TRUTHS THAT SHE LEARNED
or the tears that she cried
in the bridges that burned
or the way that she died."

"Seasons of Love" from the RENT soundtrack