For this new coming chapter, I have been trying to find a new balance between preparation for the World Race and my life that is still going on. I have been repeated asking “Lord, how to I prepare for this new coming year of my life but still invest and be effective where I am at now? Do I need to make sacrifices here? What do I give up? etc. “
I couldn’t hear the answers. Through the giant wave of all these questions I have been slowly sinking into a valley of discouragement. I have let my emotions control my actions instead of holding onto peace of mind that my Savior has freely given to me. I have let my circumstances of not having clarity, dull my effectiveness in current ministry.
Then I read this devotion today and it slapped in the face…in an awesome way.
“Moses saw the oppression of his people and felt certain that he was the one to deliver them, and in the righteous indignation of his own spirit he started to right their wrongs. After he launched his first strike for God and for what was right, God allowed Moses to be driven into empty discouragement, sending him into the desert to feed sheep for forty years. At the end of that time, God appeared to Moses and said to him, ” ’. . . bring My people . . . out of Egypt.’ But Moses said to God, ’Who am I that I should go . . . ?’ ” (Exodus 3:10-11). In the beginning Moses had realized that he was the one to deliver the people, but he had to be trained and disciplined by God first. He was right in his individual perspective, but he was not the person for the work until he had learned true fellowship and oneness with God.
We may have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants, and yet when we start to do it, there comes to us something equivalent to Moses’ forty years in the wilderness. It’s as if God had ignored the entire thing, and when we are thoroughly discouraged, God comes back and revives His call to us. And then we begin to tremble and say, “Who am I that I should go . . . ?” We must learn that God’s great stride is summed up in these words— “I AM WHO I AM . . . has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). We must also learn that our individual effort for God shows nothing but disrespect for Him— our individuality is to be rendered radiant through a personal relationship with God, so that He may be “well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). We are focused on the right individual perspective of things; we have the vision and can say, “I know this is what God wants me to do.” But we have not yet learned to get into God’s stride. If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a time of great personal growth ahead.”
– Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest.
Moses new his calling but had to wait for instruction and discipline so he could be effective and succeed in his ministry. The same applies to us as missionaries today.
I am feeling unqualified, but God will qualify me.
I am feeling restless, but God offers me peace.
I am feeling unequipped, but God will equip me.
I am feeling overwhelmed, but God carries the weight of my burdens.
I am feeling ineffective, but God plants seeds through our faithfulness even if we don’t see fruit.
I am feeling empty, but God fills.
This is a time of building and a time of stretching. A time of growth and self assessment.
Psalm 139:23-24 says ” Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. ”
It makes me think of a garden and how it must constantly be maintained and checked for weeds for it to be beautiful and truly flourish. Or else the weeds limit the growth, and choke the roots of the good seeds.
I am growing. I am stretching.
God is just gardening. 🙂
