He showed me that being willing is more important than your actual performance. You don't have to believe that you are able, because without Christ we aren't. You just need to be available- He'll take care of the rest. I'm a really impatient person, I like to be in control, and I always have high expectations for myself. When I started working at Starbucks, they told me it would take three to six months before I would be completely comfortable with the work environment and that totally freaked me out, because when I can't perform or work as well as I expect myself too, I have this overwhelming feeling of inadequacy and uselessness; I truly am my own worst enemy. As you could imagine, this unfortunate combination of tendencies can be harmful to not just my ability to thrive as a person but it can also hurt my relationship with God. It can be lethal, because it often causes me to believe that I need to do everything myself, preventing me from depending on or surrendering to God.
I've had to learn to cast my anxieties on Christ and to each day surrender myself to His will. This past summer, I went on a short term mission trip to the Dominican Republic and each day they included an optional "quiet time" in the morning. On the first day of ministry, I slept through it, and as a result I let my own need for control overrule His ability to work through me. It made me uncomfortable to casually bring up Jesus or ask to pray for someone, even though that was the sole reason I had even gone to the DR. How could I expect God to move in and through me if I wasn't even willing to give Him a couple minutes of my day? After that first day, I decided to make the effort and spend my quiet time in the morning surrendering my day to Him by diving into His word. Each day, I prayed that He would use me for His kingdom even if that meant taking me out of my comfort zone. As a result, I saw Him do a work in and through me. I saw Him present opportunities for me to pray with people and to plant the seed because I chose to be available to what He had for me. Why is this not our daily prayer? Why do we blame everything else in our lives for why we haven't seen God move when we don't even acknowledge Him until after the fact? Let me tell you something that has taken me a very long time to believe: you do not have to perform perfectly for Christ to use you for His glory, and you're not important enough to screw up His work. I never prayed a perfect prayer, I didn't witness physical healing, I never said the exact perfect thing that caused hundreds of people to surrender their lives to Christ as a result; I didn't even see anyone commit their lives to Christ with my own eyes while I was down there. But by focusing my eyes on what God had for me and what I could do for His glory just that day, I saw Him do a work in me. He showed me that I don't have to do everything right to serve, and most of all He showed me that being willing to be uncomfortable is more important than the actual performance. You don't have to believe that you are able, because without Christ we aren't. You just need to be available- He'll take care of the rest. I believe that trusting God to work everything out for His good is vital, but I also know it isn't a one way street. He is always desiring to spend time with us, and often we just turn the other way because we have so much else to do. It takes more than trust to see God work, it takes surrendering. It takes surrendering your day, your time, your expectations, your fears, and your comfort zone. Once we give our day back to Christ (because it was always His anyway) we'll see Him start to use our day for His glory. Take that step and be available because once you are, you'll see there are opportunities to serve, pray, and love on others all around you.
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"Choose everyday to forgive yourself. You are human, flawed, but most of all worthy of love."
alison malee L i b b y G r a c eAs you read what I've written in journal I want it to feel like we're talking over coffee. I encourage you to send me a note, so we can continue the conversation.
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