Being a pastor's kid is never easy, especially as there's a lot of pressure to do good and maintain the church boy image. Hillsong United frontman Joel Houston knows this feeling very well as the son of Brian Houston, senior pastor at Hillsong Church.
Instead of embracing the pastor's kid image, Joel actually tried to shake it off. "I grew up a pastor's kid looking for an excuse, honestly, to kind of run away from the pressure of being a pastor's kid," he tells the Gospel Herald.
But Joel says God knew better. Try as he might to escape his identity, he always ended back at his roots. He thought he knew what he was doing, but God took all of his plans and said, "Watch how I'm going to make this work." Joel said God definitely has a sense of humor, since he ended up serving in the ministry he swore he wanted nothing to do with.
Houston says God believed in him even during moments when he doubted himself, and he assures other lost souls that they do not need to be perfect before they can serve God and His ministry.
"You don't have to be super talented, or have it all together - God is all about using people who just make themselves available," he says. "I think that's the whole measure of why God wants to work with us and through us, why He wants to do what He does through people. Because he wants us to understand His personality, His character, His nature, what He's about. And, the only way He can do that is through the revelation of grace, that none of us deserve this or have earned it, but yet God still chooses to work His message though people, and that's a beautiful story."
