[From Dww-work]… GOD’S CALL TO LEN TANG

A decade ago, I was working in Silicon Valley for Oracle Corporation, the world’s second largest software company next to Microsoft. At Oracle, on top of paying me $40 an hour, they stocked the fridges full of free drinks all day long, provided a free world-class gym to work out in, threw incredible company parties, and of course offered stock options. Then came God’s call to me to leave that world for seminary and full-time ministry.

Now that I’m a church planter, I suppose I could say that God’s call was to leave software development for new church development.

How will God use me? I don’t know. I know that I left the riches of Silicon Valley to equip the church to reach lost people. Was this a “sacrifice”? By no means. As the great Scottish missionary to Africa, David Livingstone, said, “It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege…I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who left His Father’s throne on high to give Himself for us.” The Father loved us so much that he left the glory of heaven to walk the dusty streets of Palestine, then to suffer, be crucified, and die on a Cross so that we might be reconciled to God.

When I think about what Christ did for me, when I think about the privilege it has been to have a front-row seat to see lives changed by the power of the gospel, I say that it is no sacrifice, but rather a privilege. I think I’d be a fool not to follow God.

Rev. Len Tang

http://www.lakegrovepres.org/sermon_2003-08-24.htm

TANG, LEN; TESTIMONY; CALL TO MINISTRY; WORK; CAREER; WEALTH; SACRIFICE