Robert E Rasmussen.com

Let me take you a bit further in the previous story of my faith crisis in college. That was quite a few years ago, and I did not at that time think of it as a Gethsemane-like call to surrender, but I now realize that it was. True to form, God wanted my surrender because He intended to ask for sacrifice. He might have worked in my heart to ask me to pursue architecture to the best of my ability. In a different believer, God might have required the sacrifice of climbing the professional ladder and designing or starting a company, not as a driven business person but as a faithful worker seeking to worship God in the marketplace. He did not do that with me. My faith crisis became a career crisis. As the Father required of Jesus the sacrifice of His life, the Father required of me, in a much milder version, my life as an architect. I did not know the specifics, but I believed that God wanted me to serve in a full-time occupation in ministry. This had been something I wanted to avoid because my dad was both a pastor and missionary. I had seen the jobs and wasn’t interested! You might ask, “Was it a difficult sacrifice?” Yes, and no. Yes in the sense that I had dreamed of the kinds of houses I could design (and live in!), and the cars I would drive, swooping into the three-car garage under the house! But in a deeper way, it was not a difficult sacrifice to make. I’ll tell you why (and here I am actually giving some counsel). When you love God, and want to be like Jesus, it is a deep relief when you finally know His will, even when it is hard, even when in a sense it is what you didn’t want to hear. Because deep down inside, what we really want, you and I, is not the amazing house and sports cars to go with it. What we really want is to please God.