We are all victims of faulty thinking about this. As someone who has been allowed to do “big” things and small, see awesome miracles and felt the searing heat of desert winds, failure and human abandonment, I now realize I had it all wrong.

Contemporary ministry is designed to be about bigness, success, results. Isn't it? If someone set about to fulfill their calling today, this would be the goal:

I have to tell you; I have failed at nearly every goal I just listed. I don't knock on doors. I've never gotten a publisher to publish my books. I have a very tiny donor base. I don't seek places to speak. By current ministry standards, I am an abject failure. In fact, by those standards, 90% of pastors and missionaries are failures.

It was sad to read the editor of a major Christian magazine, as a preface to their article on a megachurch, to chide small churches and their pastors for not having a vision, for settling for small. Believe me, many of them dream of Big but still serve in the small.

But neither big churches nor popular ministers means spiritual greatness. God doesn't measure that way. We have to differentiate between great things God does and spiritual greatness. God saves whom He will, moves as He pleases, redeems by the thousands or more because He wills to - and He'd do so with or without us. If He uses us, that's our blessing, not His need.

I wanted to write this because there are multitudes of Christians and servants and pastors who feel so insignificant, so tiny, even useless - partly because they compare themselves to the media idea of Big Things in Christianity. They serve in small arenas but in big ways - unnoticed, unappreciated, unthanked. They do it because they love Jesus, and they love people. And that's HUGE to God.

Twice in my life I have reached the “pinnacle”. In 1978, I had a 2,000 person-mailing list, I was in demand all year, I was on the 700 Club, wrote articles for a major Christian magazine, and became chairman of a blossoming international ministry. And one day, it came crashing down. I wasn't in sin. I hadn't disobeyed.

I did not understand, until a few years later, when I was living in a tiny town called Everman, Texas, not knowing if I was even “called to ministry” anymore,

In the midst of that test of seeming failure and isolation, God drew about eight neighborhood kids into my life. They became my “ministry” for the next two years, hanging out with them, playing, bike riding, and teaching them about Jesus.

Then, called to El Paso in 1987, within a year, I was back on top - constant travel, vital youth ministry that saw nearly 1000 kids in ten years, appearances on Geraldo and Montel Williams, you name it. It was an important and intense time.

Then, suddenly, in 1997 during the illness and death of my dad, it all crashed and burned. I wasn't in sin. I didn't disobey. It was just…TIME.

Of course, in the midst of grief and human abandonment, I did not understand. Not until I was asked to take four kids to a dismal summer camp in New Mexico, where I was assigned to the worst and neediest kids there. I was disrespected by camp counselors half my age, moving like a phantom for five days among them.

But they brought David to me, a boy with debilitating asthma, and Frank, a big, angry hurt kid who scared the younger counselors. They became my flock, my special charge. And I had one boy who was semi-autistic. They “dumped” him on me one day because he'd had an “accident”, and they didn't want to deal with the mess. I took him and helped him clean up and change into clean clothes and go back to the group. I did it without embarrassing or shaming him. They had already done that. And then I washed his clothes. I don't share this to make myself look good, far from it.

But that evening, during the worship service, when this 11 year old, who could not bond with anyone, lay his head in my lap and fell asleep, I understood. To God, this was “big” ministry. This was His HEART.

There are times I have longed for the “big stuff”, I confess. It was hard to read of big Christian superstars and writers who'd written 70 books, and their latest was a million seller. It was spiritual envy, and it was a sin, and I left it behind.

But there was a deeper thing. A sense that I wish I'd done, could do more, for Jesus- for all that He had done for me.

Somewhere at the five-mile mark outside of Benson, Arizona, heading to Tucson, I was driving and prayed, “Jesus, I've done so little for You. So little!” He replied in a gentle voice that brought me to tears, “Every young life that you have loved, you loved for Me.” I understood in that moment what really mattered to Him, and I've not wanted more since. Just to be His heart, letting Him love kids through me, for Him, with Him.

No, God does not measure greatness as we do. I read one day that the day JFK was assassinated, when all the world reeled in shock and sorrow, there was a small obituary buried on the back page of a British newspaper for a man named CS Lewis. Humanly, it seems unfair. JFK lived a selfish, corrupt life and was hailed as a hero in death. CS Lewis wrote books, lectured about the Christian faith and loved Jesus, and died with hardly a mention.

Ray Boltz wrote a song called “Thank You” about someone going to heaven, and one person after the other coming up to say, “Thank you for giving to the Lord.” He was welcomed by people he barely remembered, people he did not know, who had come to Jesus because he taught Sunday School, gave to missions.

We see only the back side of this tapestry, a tangled knot that often makes no sense, has no apparent beauty, just a seeming endless praying, serving, loving, often with no visible fruit at all.

But oh, my friend, on that Day when He turns the tapestry over, you will know just how much He did and was able to do because you gave, you loved, you obeyed!

I think of Amy Carmichael, who as a young girl left all her privilege in England for the mission field, ending up in the small village of Dunhavur, India. She spent her life rescuing children from temple prostitution. She built a home for them. She never became “famous”, never saved the multitudes, built no mega ministry, and never returned to her home in England. In fact, she spent the last twenty years of her life unable to get out of bed. But she WROTE.

Her mission still stands in India. And her books, written in adversity and illness, reach across the decades and continue to touch lives for eternity, and so they have touched me.

My loved friend, God knows your heart, and your service, your giving and your love for the hurting and the lost. You too have said, “Have I really done anything for Jesus? Has my life mattered?” To you, Jesus says, “Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these, you have done it to Me. I was hungry, you fed me…naked, you clothed me…in prison, you visited me.”

Do you want to know the path to true spiritual greatness? It is defined by four words, and in these four words, true ministry is eternally defined: