Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.

I Thessalonians 5:4 Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.

This is the verse that is echoing in my head this morning after yesterday's... I don't know what you call that... annointing?

Long story short, Rich Nathan preached a great message on women's roles in the church and basically flung the door open for women to do any area of ministry including Sr. Pastor. Which is pretty much what I have believed for a while after doing some research on it several years back. Anyway, at the end he asked for women who had a call to ministry on their lives to come forward for prayer.

I looked at Chris and said, "Yeah.. I do... but..." And he said, "You'd better go then!"

Remember those verses I had from a while back?

I Timothy 1:12 And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry;

what ministry I asked him?
And some time later he says,

Colossians 4:17 And say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it.

And I had the distinct feeling that God was calling me "Archippus" whatever that meant.

So, I found out that Archippus's name meant "master of the horse" and that he was an elder at Philemon's house church. Didn't make much sense to me because there was no way I could be an elder.

Anyway.. I've shoved all that aside for sometime now, but yesterday Pastor Nathan prayed down the Holy Spirit annointing on me and a lady prayed over me too with laying on of hands that I would be free from my past mindset about gender roles so that God could reveal to me the ministry he has for me. Wow.

So I'm looking further into Archippus, and I found out that he was likely the first bishop of Laodicea in Phrygia (Turkey), but at the time of Paul's writing he was a pastor or co-pastor of the church in Colosse.

Also, this is a guy whose heart is with Paul. Only two men were called Paul's fellow soldiers, Epaphroditis and Archippus. This word in Greek means "an associate in labours and conflicts for the cause of Christ"

Not a lot else known about this guy, but God found him important enough to mention twice in Scripture. Once to let us know that he was an upstanding guy and the other time to let us know that he had an important ministry call on his life.

And this is who God says I am... Hmmm...