Last week was a tough week for me. I was feeling very inadequate in terms of leading my team, and I was accepting the attacks of Satan as each day went by. I was not fighting these attacks at all. I was accepting them and asking God to help me get through this tough time. It was a long week. I detached myself from my team and took a back seat in terms of my leadership role.
Throughout the week, I continued praying for God’s guidance in picking my goals for the month. One goal kept nagging me, but I kept pushing it away. God kept saying, “Embrace your team.” He wanted me to embrace being a team leader and work to minister to each of my team members individually. I felt inadequate and I wanted to be lazy. I thought, “Well, I don’t really need to do that. I could just let the whole team/community thing slip by for the next several months and come out the same as I left.” What a waste of time!
So, a new week has begun and I’ve decided to embrace where God has put me. Instead of asking God to get me through it, I’ve been asking Him to keep the attacks of Satan away from me. Isn’t God powerful enough to take away those attacks? Satan wants me to accept my inadequacies and to be lazy in my approach to building my team. He had wooed me into accepting an early defeat. What astounds me the most is that I let it creep in and I accepted it without putting up a fight! My prayers have changed this week and my confidence in God has become more real. I’m praying for the Lord to show me more of himself each day and I’m asking Him to keep me from evil, not to simply get me through it. I am seeking God’s full blessings for my life and flinging my life out to Him that He may astound me with His love and provisions for my life. I refuse to let anything in my life be larger than God.
God met me as I read The Prayer of Jabez on Sunday. These words describe exactly what I have feeling:
Maybe the new ministry opportunities you prayed for and received are turning out to require a person with much more ability than you will ever have. You have taken up an armload of God’s blessings, marched into new territory…and stumbled into
overwhelming circumstances. When believers find themselves in this kind of unexpected quandary, they often feel afraid. Misled. Abandoned. A little angry… I did.
Talk about plummeting! I felt out of control and weak – nothing like a leader is supposed to feel – and most days all I could see was the ground rushing up to meet me. It was early in my ministry adventure…But I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was the wrong man for the job.
Extremely upset, I decided to seek the counsel of a trusted older man. John Mitchell was in his eighties then – a Yorkshire-born Bible teacher who had been a spiritual father to thousands. I told him what I thought God was calling me to do and then confessed my problem. I was still trying to describe my crisis when he broke in.
“Son,” he said, in his kindly brogue, “that feeling that you are running from is called dependence. It means you’re walking with the Lord Jesus.” He paused to let me take in his words, then continued. “Actually, the second you’re not feeling dependent is the second you’ve backed away from truly living by faith.”
I didn’t like what I’d heard. “You’re saying, Dr. Mitchell, that feeling that I just can’t do it is what I’m supposed to be feeling?”
“Why certainly, young man!” he said, beaming. “That’s the one alright.”
It’s a frightening and utterly exhilarating truth, isn’t it? As God’s chosen, blessed sons and daughters, we are expected to attempt something large enough that failure is guaranteed … unless God steps in.
