Jesus and the Bible is the most studied of all human history.
I didn't find Jesus Christ until I turned 20 this was in the summer of 2018.
How can I make this happen? The scary thing to me is that with the current path I am on I won't have much time to let alone study the Bible.
I don't want to be a layman.
It takes time and experience to become a good minister of the gospel. You need to carefully examine your motives for wanting to be a minister. I suggest you get hold of Charles Spurgeon's
"Lectures to My Students" and read it right through, praying all the way that the Holy Spirit will show you what He wants to teach you in it. This book is absolutely the best book to read for anyone aspiring to be a minister.
I wanted to be a minister in my late 20s, and I started theological training. Then the Holy Spirit led me into getting a degree in English Literature and a teaching qualification and went into a 19 year career in teaching. It is only in the last 20 years at around 51 years of age that I became an elder of my local Presbyterian church, and had regular opportunities to preach. For the last six years we didn't have a minister and because I had become the senior elder, I was essentially the pastor.
I found that it was hard work with a lot of demands on my time and energy. I learned that it was not the glamorous role I thought it was going to be when I first thought about ministry in my late 20s. It became apparent to me, even though I wanted to be a minister, God had not called me that way. So I'm glad I didn't become a minister, because if God has not called me, it would have been a very stressful role and I could have ended up being burned out, like many ministers who have left the ministry.
It is more than just getting up on Sundays and preaching. You have to have a real love and a heart for the people you are ministering to. You have to have a love and passion for lost souls. You have to not only read the Bible and become totally familiar with it, you have to do the Bible - put it into practice every hour or every day of the week. If you don't live the Bible in your personal and family life, you will fail as a minister, because the people will see you as a hypocrite - being all spiritual on Sundays, but someone totally different during the week.
Also, as a minister you have to chair the ladies flower arranging committee, the Board of Managers and the Elders meeting every month. Also, you need to be prepared to be on call 24 hours a day, and so you will have little personal life. You will take more funerals than weddings. You will also have to put up with every form of criticism from members.
If you are a pastor of a independent church, there will always be someone who will want your job and they will try to discredit you so that you will be fired and they to take your place. If you are a Presbyterian minister you have to get a theology degree first and then spend 2 more years being trained the Presbyterian way. Then when you are a minister, you are obliged to comply with the Book of Presbyterian Order.
If you become a Baptist minister, you may come under pressure from those who give the most money to the church. If you don't preach what they want to hear, they may bully you into submission and wear you down until you get burned out. That happened to a good minister in a Baptist church where I was a deacon, and the church secretary who was an accountant bullied the minister until he resigned and got out of the ministry altogether.
If you become an Anglican or Episcopalian priest, you are bound to comply with the church's liturgy and its traditions and rules, and you might get just 15 minutes to preach in Sunday services. You would start as a young curate with the Vicar as your boss, and if you became a Vicar, you will then have the Bishop on your back if you don't comply with what he wants of you.
Charles Spurgeon said to his students: "If you can do anything else other than be a minister, for goodness sake, go and do it!"
This may not be good news for you, but I am giving you my 51 years of experience in the faith.
You need to know beyond all doubt that you are truly called of the Holy spirit to be a minister of the gospel, because it will take years of study and prayer before you will get to run a church and preach in its pulpit.
You have said you don't get much time to read the Bible right now. Whew! Not a good start!
