Did you know you’re a priest?

“What do you do?” We ask each other this question. It’s the second question after, “What is your name?” When you’re a kid, you learn why the answer to this question is so important because people always ask you, “What are you going to do when you grow up?”

The answer to this question, whether it’s team leader, musician, lawyer, “I own a business”, or “I’m a student” clarifies the decision we made at some point of what is the best use of our time in this life, of how we feel that God has called us to bless the world around us.

From a ministry perspective, we similarly invest time in understanding our spiritual gifts and where we fit into the body of Christ. We strive to know whether we identify more with the ministry of the apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, or teacher. We take on names and titles to articulate what God has called us to do to serve His body.

And then we undergo a copernican revolution when somebody lets us know that our primary identity isn’t what we do but who we are. We begin to see all the passages of Scripture that talk about us being sons and daughters and the position and authority that are endowed to children of God. We learn about the intimacy afforded us in being the bride of Christ. We are empowered by the privilege it is to be a friend of the Holy Spirit.

We realize that in order to have any impact on others, we must root ourselves in our identity of who we are in God.

On the one side there is a relational identity: child of God, bride of Christ, friend of the Holy Spirit.

One the other side is an identity associated with what we do: our job, our spiritual gifts, our place in the five-fold.

We realize that our impact on others and what we do must flow from who we are.

So far, I haven’t probably said anything that you haven’t heard before.

But I recently had a thought that felt revolutionary at least to me (and I hope that it is at least a fresh thought to you).

I realized that there is an identity that bridges the gap between who you are and what you do. It goes back to the days of Moses, when he was finally called up onto the mountain to hear God’s voice. Israel had been delivered from Pharaoh, and God is ready to share with Moses about who his people are now that they are no longer slaves.

He says, “You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6).

The priest is one who ministers both to God and to people. It’s centered around the presence of God and interceding for the people. There is both relationship to God and relationship to others. It describes both who we are in relationship to God (as ones who go into the presence of God) and what we do for people (intercession).

I wonder how many of us think of ourselves as priests.

Most of us have heard that we are children of God, and most of us have gotten a sense of our primary vocation, our spiritual gifts, and a sense of our primary ministry.

Jesus Himself was identified as our high priest, and as followers of Jesus, we should follow Him into a role of priest.

But do we identify ourselves as priests? When I think about what I am going to do today, do I think about what a priest would do?

When you begin to see yourself as a priest, your time in the presence of God isn’t just a relational moment that prepares you for what you will do later in the day. Ministering to the Lord becomes the primary activity of your life, and so spending time with God is not a support to your ministry, but it is your ministry.

My invitation today is for all of us to consider in what place as leaders do we put prayer. Is it only a relational moment that supports what I do the rest of the day? Or is prayer a part of my calling of what I am to do?

God said he wanted a kingdom of priests. As we begin to see ourselves as priests, it becomes more normal to spend more time in the presence of God, and then during the times that we aren’t specifically praying, we look for ways to host His presence wherever we go.

If you’re looking for a tool to help grow your prayer life, check out the course that I created called “Hearing God for Leaders.”