Have you ever thought that something God asked you to do turned out to be a total waste? Have you ever thought that He had put you in a certain place for no reason at all? Have you ever looked at something He asked you to do or somewhere He placed you and been disappointed because it didn’t turn out the way you thought?
I hope some of you answered “yes” to one or all of the above, or else I suppose I’m alone, because I had A LOT of these feelings during this month.
I wrote in my previous blog about Romania, which you can find here, that I was seeing God’s sovereignty in so many ways through our time in Sistarovat, which is true. But as the month progressed, the weather got worse, disabling us from doing labor, and we continued to have more and more time on our hands, which posed two problems: 1) no work was getting done around the camp and 2) there was much more time to think and with that lies of a month wasted came creeping into my mind.
If you regularly read my blogs you’ve found by now that manual labor is not my first choice of ministry, but if that’s what is assigned to me for the month then I’m going to put everything I have into it and do everything I can to make sure all the jobs get done. It drove me absolutely insane that so many days I woke up ready to work, just to look outside and see the snow or rain, and realize that it would be another day spent inside. The slight case of cabin fever I began to feel didn’t help either. As the days passed and our work remained minimal, despite my awareness and acknowledgement of God’s control over all the circumstances of the month, especially the weather that hindered us from working, Satan, that sneaky snake, kept speaking to me lies of waste and pointlessness, laziness and comfortability, distraction and lack of focus. I hate to say it, but he can be pretty convincing sometimes.
Thankfully, my God was faithful to remind me as I read through Matthew 10, that
38and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Losing my life and taking up my cross this month meant giving up my assumption of what God wanted for us in Sistarovat and my expectation to work five days a week from 9-5, and finding that HIS plan for the month was not to waste time, but to spend extra, intimate time that can be hard to come by on the Race with 21 of His children. His plan for the month was not for us to be lazy, but for us to receive rest, rejuvination, re-focus, and refilling. His plan for the month was not for distraction, but for fellowship between our squadmates and with our contacts. His plan for the month was to give us exactly what He knew we needed.
It is so easy sometimes to forget to walk daily in the will of God because we believe we’re walking in His bigger plan. It’s so easy to forget that His ways are so much higher above our ways and we’re not always going to understand why He does what He does. It’s so easy to forget that dying to yourself doesn’t only mean serving your brother or sister who annoys the heck out of you or dealing with a slightly messier room than you’d like because your roommate is unorganized, but that it also means surrendering our wants and desires, our expectations, our thoughts, our plans and simply saying, “Lord, what do YOU want this time/day/month/life to be?” then seeking after that and only that.
Do yourself a favor, and don’t forget. Remember every day to surrender everything you are to Him, even if you feel like what He is telling you to do is wasting your time, efforts, or resources. He promises that if you do that, if you lose your life for His sake, that's when you will truly find it.
