David Morris

Summer School

Well, at long last the summer has ended. The two job, two class, two nursing home ministry, too much to do summer has ended. (please notice the slight attempt, without extensive pleading or excuse-making, for my lamentable recent absence. :-) But along the way, the Lord was kind to shower blessings as plentiful as the evening thunderstorms that have become a Greenville summer staple.

I didn't really expect my two jobs to be a source of great lesson-learning. I grew to be extremely thankful for God's gracious providence of the perfect jobs for me.

Working at Clean Site gave me some more good job experience I may be able to use in the future (where else could a kid like me get so much time in a Bobcat and dumptruck), as well as bringing in bigger paychecks than I had ever seen in my whole life (which killed the ugly monster of my interest-bearing college debts faster than I could have imagined).

The Media Center brought more opportunities to learn about computers and more experience with learning useful skills while doing a ministry. I started to think and pray daily that I would be like Joseph to my employers. That because I was there, God would cause them to blessed (Gen. 39:2-5).

But I wasn't really expecting to learn much. I mean, it wasn't like I was at camp or something. I wasn't on a mission trip, didn't do an internship, and didn't even take any summer school. It looked to me like I would have one of those necessary summers-you have to work like a dog, but then you have to duck in embarassment at the end when people ask you what you did (with "ministry" or "school" or some other profitable idea tacitly wedged in there).

But the daily grind was also a great place for me to learn about self-discipline. It was the perfect time to remind me that walking in the Spirit must apply to the work environment, too, and hopefully it was a lasting teacher of what the people in my church will face on a daily basis.

Halfway into the summer, my boss met with all of us to inform us that while the payroll had never been higher, the production had never been lower. He's a very good motivator, and from that time on I could hear his voice at every site we went to. But moving as fast as you can launching 3/4 full 5 gallon buckets of primer over the side of a 8 foot tall dumptruck in 90 degree Greenville with 79% humidity gets old pretty quickly. So the opportunities to say, "Shut up, Self," and keep doing what I ought to started to multiply.

From the physical intensity of my mornings I would go to the air-conditioned comforts of the Media Center, where I was my own boss. Projects, organization, and doing computer stuff only added more opportunities for my flesh to rebel. It's amazing how un-motivated I can be when I just don't feel like doing anything.

Then I'd go home, and Church History correspondence and the weekly aggravation of summer extension would greet me in the three hours of evening I had left before my body demanded I go to bed.

All of those circumstances blended perfectly to bring me face to face with my daily need to say, "No" to my own will, to learn physical, mental, and spiritual self-discipline, and to experience just a taste of the demands future ministry might hold for me.

There's no way I can imagine anything that would have been more taxing to my self-discipline this summer than what I had. There's just no substitute for daily, in-your-face, this-isn't-going-away kind of intense pressure. And it was good for me.

They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with its affections and lusts. From a lust to be lazy to the kind of lusts we don't even mention, they all must be brutally skewered with merciless, pitiless surety.

I'm not even sure I can put into words how beneficial this summer was for me.

It was good.

Posted by apelles at September 5, 2003 04:52 PM