Byron and I spent the weekend in St. Louis catching up with the many ways that God is at work in the inner-city. Our church body has learned the benefit of living communally, and each missionary has sacrificed his or her own wants for the sake of what is needed today. When God's people trust Him to provide for their every need, the body is not left wanting the things of this world.
I've expressed my struggle with being physically separated from my brothers and sisters. Since God has allowed me to share in the Spirit's move among this church, I have tried desperately in my flesh to duplicate this work, based on the fruit I felt I should reap. How should I respond if He desires me to serve faithfully from a "lower" position?
Having been invited to teach this weekend, I experienced conflict between the pride of my identity and the simple act of obedience. What if my body no longer finds me useful? What if my gifts and skills aren't up to the task of building the same environment here? What if He wants nothing more than for me to bury myself in scripture? What if the training He has anointed me to write will never be mine to teach? What if this vision is never fulfilled in my lifetime?
Am I okay with a humble position and legacy?
Hebrews 11 tells us of many who lived by faith but never reaped the fruit of their own labor. They are honored not for the size of their impact, but for their obedience. Many of us spend years chasing the one thing we know we are created to do; this pursuit is perpetuated by Christian literature, skills tests, and the church itself. Those that do find their "identity" sit around, waiting for the opportunity to be useful, shirking the responsibility of any act of obedience that does not perfectly fit their individual anointing. They sit, and they sit, and they sit, and they sit...
What if you saw God behind a movement and accepted whatever task was necessary to advance His Kingdom? What if this meant submitting to another authority? What if this required you to serve "below" your individual sense of purpose? Would you trust Him anyway? Are you willing to let God break up your short-term plans or ask you to accomplish a menial task if it is what the church needs? Or is your role more important than His timing?
This is the true act of faith: to walk in hope and obedience, even when you cannot see how the task He's given you will lead to your vision being fulfilled. I could whine about being asked today to spend my hours in study rather than gathering the harvest or complain that the task isn't important enough. The alternative is to trust that whatever He asks of me is crucial to His work, He knowing better than I what is necessary to fulfill His plan.
4 comments:
Ah... so many of my same thoughts tonight. Do God and I desire the same things or is this desire only mine?
Loving God enough to put aside my own fleshly desires or pursuing what I want without regard to His desires is an all-to-common struggle for me. Above all though, I want to honor Him so I am yet again turning over a part of my life to Him. I know my ways would always pale in comparison to His plans so I have no reason to wonder if I chose the right thing when I choose Him.
Choosing Him means difficult growth but growth is developing character so I will let Him work through me to that end.
Elisabeth Elliot says:
”Taken in a spirit of trust, even loneliness contributes to the maturing of character, even the endurance of separation and silence and that hardest thing of all, uncertainty, can build in us a steady hope.”
I'm afraid these thoughts aren't quite paralleling yours, so I'm sorry for not being totally relevant but they seemed at least slightly linked to me.
The way I look at it, two trails of thought that do not completely parallel one another will intersect at some point :) Here's what I see:
I've read your blog enough and have seen your heart frequently, so I get the impression that this is less an issue of your desires matching God's and more an issue of timing. This is where obedience is so important. We can live immobile lives waiting for our primary desire to be fulfilled -- even one that He has given us -- and do so to the detriment of what He wants to accomplish today.
We have such a small glimpse of our own dreams. God may need to prepare us. He may need to prepare those that share our dream. We can rush the process and produce an Ishmael, or we can serve faithfully even as we wait. If we hang our entire usefulness on that one thing, we limit the use of our vessel.
The act of saying, "Send me," means placing our vessel before Him to be filled with whatever noble purpose He has for us now. It may or may not bring us any closer to our dreams -- it may contribute to someone else's. But there is joy and rest in obedience to Him, and our faith is demonstrated when we trust Him regardless of what we perceive He is doing for our own desires.
Nice. I like the way you think. :)
You're right, that's so much of it but I'm determined to not just sit around and wait, while doing nothing. I don't want to waste even a day and I am not going to put my life on hold for something that might happen. If I did I would be a poor steward of the time God's given me.
Sometimes I'm scared that if I'm busy with other things this one thing might disappear from my life but then I remember God's in control, not me and with Him anything is possible.
I think I'm being unfair. It sounded like you needed encouragement but now it's once again you helping me.
Thank you again.
Don't shortchange yourself, kid :) The best kind of encouragement is in the back and forth banter about the character and nature of God. Teaching and speaking into each other's lives is what the Body has been established by Him to do, for the sharpening of our faith. If your wisdom was a frequently found commodity in everyday life, I'd have little need for this awesome blogging community; this is a dwelling place for those made alive by the power of Godly writing.
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