Continuation of Be (Part 1)
(Since I’m posting them in the same day, I’m posting this first so it will show up below Part 1 on my home page)
God’s changing who I am before my very eyes. For longer than I’ve been a leader, I’ve been a sleeper. I started sleeping through the night when I was 6 days old. I can fall asleep anytime, anywhere. It’s not a bad thing except that I couldn’t get out of bed early if my life depended on it. I would try to wake up and do my devotions in the morning and a voice in my head would convince me that I could just do it later. But this last month I would wake up, usually without an alarm clock, in time to be at morning prayer. It was a big deal for me because morning prayer was optional. Most people didn’t go. I’m not praising myself here, because I know that if I had it my way I would have been sleeping in until the last possible second, then running around the get ready before our ride showed up. But God put prayer in my heart and I was able to go every day.
God is also revealing my selfishness and how I get irritated over simple things or sometimes nothing. He’s showing me the ugly parts of me so that I can learn and grow. It’s not fun, I promise, but He’s doing it so that I can become the person He wants me to be. God wants to do amazing things in my life and in yours. God has been speaking Joshua 3:5 to me, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.” While meditating on that verse I thought, “What if we consecrated ourselves every single day?” Then every tomorrow God will do amazing things. Can you imagine? And then I’m reminded again that the amazing things aren’t about me. The World Race is not about me. Ministry is not about me. It doesn’t say that the Lord will do amazing things through me or for me. It’s not about me doing amazing things. It’s about the Lord doing amazing things. It’s about what He wants done, not what I want to do.
You don’t have to be on a mission trip to Africa to learn these lessons. God chose to bring me here and teach me these things but that doesn’t have to be where you learn them. Come on this learning journey with me and I learn how to just
be. In America it’s all about doing. For me, life has been about running from place to place, doing as many things in one day as I can, making the most of my valuable time. It’s about doing church, doing Bible studies, doing work, doing fun. I never stopped long enough to realize that it’s not about
doing church but about
being church. It’s not about
doing the Christian thing, but about
being intimate with God.
We’re still less than 2 months into this journey so I know that my lessons don’t stop here. It’s time for me to put what I learn into practice and to learn more in the meantime. I’ll never fully know God. None of us will. But I’m learning how to get to know him. It’s simple, really. Don’t do. Just be.
