It was a super bitter sweet moment. It was the first time in my life that I was going to say that this was my last time at The Voice! Or that it was my last week in Orlando. Or even this, the last time that I will get to eat a certain food or go to a certain restaurant. It was my First Last! The first time I had to say good bye but it has also been a while since I have said hello to anything new. I have been at Faith Assembly for 10+ years. I have done ministry in every aspect of the church that you can think of. I was involved in just about every form of leadership we had to offer. Now it was time to say good-bye to all of that. God wanted me to move on to a new place in life and for that I was going to drive across the nation to a little town that is no bigger than the size of our congregation on a typical Sunday morning over in the adult sanctuary. I was leaving something I knew for something I never thought I would be involved in. I’ll be honest, I had no desire to move to a small town or even a small church. I always figured I would be working at Fatih or any other multi-million dollar mega church I can find in the nation. But God revealed things to me in the process that I would have never learned if I would have stayed where I was at or done the same thing i would have always done. I faced one major problem. Was I ready to go?

I was really nervous on deciding to leave Faith or not. I have seen what has happened to people when they leave a church (for a ministry job) too early or late in their lives and I didn’t know if I fell in any of those categories or if I was about to make the right decision.  Probably the dumbest reason I gave myself on to either stay or go was the fact that I should wait till I was married to start my ministry. I wanted to have a wife that could do ministry with me. This was probably really dumb given the fact that Jesus himself didn’t need a wife to do ministry. I created reasons in my head as to why I should not leave. I questioned whether or not I was established enough. I had thoughts like “I’ve been in ministry too long and now I am too old”. “Who wants to hire a 24 year old “minister” that has never even been on a full time ministry job?” All of these things ran through my head. I prayed and prayed and asked God when is the right time to leave a ministry and He spoke to me in a way I never thought I would hear. He spoke to me with such a fire and burning desire that it was inevitable of a sign for me to dismiss.

In every Bible story, when you read about someone leaving or going somewhere, they always receive a sign. I was asked to fly out to the church to meet everyone and I was asked to preach. When I got up to preach, I felt a fire in my heart that I have never felt before. God spoke to me and said that is the Holy Spirit in you burning for this opportunity. I received a clear sign. Nothing foggy. Nothing that could be misinterpreted but a clear sign that it was time to go.

I love what I get to do now and even though I just started, I feel like I am rightfully where I need to be and I can do what God has me to do forever. I’ve learned you really will never get to know where God wants you to go if you don’t plant yourself where God needs you right now. Me staying at Faith Assembly for as long as I did was the right move and was divine from God. If I would have chosen to leave any earlier, I would have missed this opportunity. If I would have stayed at Faith I still would have probably bloomed  because Faith is amazing but I would have missed out on some cool things I am learning here that I would not have learned at Faith. The only way you are strong enough to go where God wants you to go, is if you plant yourself and grow where God wants you to grow!

Samuel Seda