As I was sitting in my office reflecting on Father’s Day and preparing for Sunday I was reminded of a letter my dad had written my sister. It was written years ago, during a season of my life when I was still trying to find my way. I was in my twenties, carrying my own struggles, making one bad choice after another.

Dad wrote: “Mark would probably succeed in life better if he’d go to a seminary and become a preacher. He has a natural ability to touch other people’s hearts, even when his own may be breaking.”

At the time Dad wrote that, I was far from the life I live now. I was not pastoring. I was not preaching. I was not standing behind a pulpit or praying with people at an altar. I was borderline homeless and still carrying the pain of my childhood, and fighting battles of addiction that I did not know how to overcome.

I guess Dad must have seen something in me.

Dad couldn’t see the direction my life was going at that moment, but he must have seen what God had placed inside of me. He saw a preacher before I ever became one. He saw that I had a heart that could touch people, even when my own heart was hurting.

Fast forward to today, I am now a pastor and living a life devoted to ministry.

That’s what God does…

He takes broken people and gives them a burden for people. He takes wounded hearts and gives them compassion for others. He takes the places where we have cried, failed, and struggled, then He turns those places into a testimony.

There were many years I was running from God. Still, God never let go of me.

Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…”

God knew me…

Before I knew Him the way I know Him now, He knew me. Before I ever stood in a church and preached the Gospel, He knew me.

Dad has been gone for a while now but oh how I wish I could sit down with him and tell him, “You were right.” I would tell him that God did call me, and that people’s hearts have been touched through the calling he saw in me all those years ago.