Winter Park, FL 2010: Even Trent Ling’s legendary, globe-trotting Navigator has seen some pressured and unpleasant days. Trent shares below that lately, and trending for years, the ministry has been buffeted by God for reasons and purposes as yet undetermined. Though he longs to get to ministering at a greater capacity, he has no doubts that God’s painful judgments are fair, right, and necessary.
From Trent Ling:
This ministry cannot keep quiet about the great God whom we serve. For instance, we have saturated every nook and cranny of this website with our earnest and endless gushing. Honestly, we just cannot help ourselves. Long ago, moved so deeply in love, we signed up to serve God for nothing; and those unwilling to make such a foolish bargain just haven’t made it here. We’re like hopeless romantics when it comes to God. He has drawn and captivated our whole hearts. No matter how tumultuous, dire, or tragic it gets, we shall go nowhere else. John 6:67-69.
In our eleven years, this ministry has endured wide swaths of the Bible coming, going, and always leaving indelible markings. Through all of it (and much of it has been downright horrible), we remain incapable of finding a more fully prosperous people than we. Though we don’t deserve it, didn’t invent it, and would have never imagined it, we remain star-struck beneficiaries of God’s rapt attention and his overflowing, incomparable love.
HOWEVER, seemingly over the past few years, and with a present-day, crescendoing determination, God has come against this ministry. Unpleasant, frustrating, confusing, and delaying, God’s unmistakably relentless and quaking discipline thwarts our near term efforts, and clouds and threatens even our long-term relevance.
We are out of money, out of time, and stiltedly overcome with the assumed responsibilities of sharing what God has miraculously delivered to us. Our plans and purposes see delays and/or downright collapses. Our dreams and convictions ebb and flow and often succumb to the sheer volume of spiritual traffic in which find ourselves. We put everyone else first and ourselves last, and yet there remains no shortage of those with ever-elevating needs. The more we give, the more entities arise as newly needy. It seems only a prison term for the entire ministry could help us catch up. No wonder the apostle Paul couldn’t/wouldn’t stay out of the pokey.
This apparent and stern about-face from heaven has certainly become daily troubling news to 100% of the ministry. Brother-by-brother and sister-by-sister, God comes regularly to press against us. This is not Satan messing with us; this is God. In that, I have always firstly considered whether we’re just doing something wrong (Galatians 2:1-2). But upon eager and humble contemplation, I just realize and acknowledge that all we do is what God has called for, revealed, and written about. We have no message, agenda, or game plan of our own. So, we will always be at God’s mercy and judgment, and we will never try to insulate ourselves from God’s weighty involvement with us. We will just continue sinking into the muck until God gets what he wants (whatever that is and however long it takes). If we asphyxiate in the mire, so be it. We have no plan B. If God rejects us, we will be rejected. We will not soldier on toward some synthetic life. We are the dogs that just won’t leave home.
I petition God countless times per day as to whether he really wants me to waste my limited terrestrial life on mere earthly projects at the expense of the spiritual work he long ago revealed for me to do. He has me busy flailing about, trying to shore up many blowing gaskets. But, unfortunately (in my eyes) none of this involves getting the Word preached. However, if he wants me to do nothing meaningful or enduring, I’m fine with that because I’m just into whatever is my lot, portion, and directive from heaven. But, I just cannot believe that God ultimately seeks just menial work and sub-standard fruit from me. I guess we’ll see the deal one day as he continues to reveal his mighty and unyielding arm against us in so many telltale ways.
Long story short, of course, there’s nothing like being alive in the year, 2010! Perhaps God has to touch us up to keep us modest, humble, relatable, and grateful. We are the clay. We have no ambition beyond being that. Should God decide to discard us, or lump and clump together a whole new effort in a brand new direction, we shan’t muster a complaint or a quibble. Romans 9:20-24. We take this position not out of obligation, but from surrendered and earnest hearts.
Whatever happens (Philippians 1:27), I hope that we will seek to serve God and never look around longingly for the day when God will serve us. Unlike the ultra-common, self-seeking “ministries” of the world, we just cannot care about us. Acts 20:24. We don’t care for God that he might care for us; we love God, and love is just not self-seeking. 1 Corinthians 13:4-5. We wrestle with God over what we understand to be his will, and we plead with him to effectuate it in our day utilizing our surrendered lives in Christ. Habakkuk 3:2. We know that God can relent and rescue us anew, but even if he does not, we hope and pray that his Kingdom marches onward without us. Daniel 3:17-18. We care passionately about the Kingdom. The subject of “us” hardly piques our interest.
The world is ripening by the hour. And, at just the right time, we had thought that we stood upon the precipice of becoming a delivering public ministry. Ironically, even as we set-up on Satan’s one-yard line, God has contravened against our notions. These developments must be understood as days of distress, rebuke, and disgrace as we have no strength to deliver what has long been planned. 2 Kings 19:3. In God’s mercy and patience, we will also remarkably see these days as light, momentary, and delightful. 2 Corinthians 4:17 and 2 Corinthians 12:10.
Uncertain, unclear, angst-riddled, and tarrying long, the account of this real-time, real-life saga shall no doubt be continued even as we have been uprooted and now helplessly sway suspended over the valley of every conceivable possibility under heaven.
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