Stepping In

Stepping In

I once interviewed a retired pastor—a gifted evangelist with a shepherd’s heart—for a book project. He recalled coming to his final pastorate as a much younger man and exploring his new church from top to bottom. In the basement he was shown an old, ornate pulpit and was asked if he might like to put it back into service.

The pulpit wasn’t just a modest ledge on which to prop his Bible—it was a serious piece of walk-in furniture! “I realized,” he said, “that this pulpit—and the pastorate it represented—wasn’t something a preacher stepped up to—it was something he stepped in to.”

The world might have viewed this neophyte pastor’s ecclesiastic call as a challenge to “step up.” But he rightly saw it as an invitation from Christ to “step in”—to enter and fully inhabit a role that required more—much more—than he humanly possessed.

Has God ever summoned you to a task or a season you were sure was bigger than your gifting—or even than your courage? To a space so formidable that you were awed by its vastness? Friends have told me they felt this weight the first time they held their infant child. I’ve felt it on the first day of a new job, in the dizzying seconds before opening my mouth to speak, and in the yawning emptiness of a new page, before one word is written on it. I may have even exhorted myself (or someone else) to step up in such circumstances as these.

I know better now.

The only appropriate response to the call of God is to enter it fully and in faith. Unreservedly. Sidling up to his charge is not obedience. Hedging our bets is no way to honor his trustworthiness. Happy is the man or woman who can step wholeheartedly into the path God opens, no matter how daunting or uncertain. No dallying. No teasing. No hiding. All in.

After all, that’s what Jesus did—and he’s the one we’re called to imitate.

He set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death.

Philippians 2:7-8, MSG