I have been trying to write this blog post for several weeks now. Each time I have sat down to write it, something has happened to deter me from posting it. The weeks immediately preceding launch were some of the most difficult weeks I have ever encountered spiritually. I began to reflect on my life and I began to measure it by the impact I have made on people’s lives up until that point. Was I really making a difference for the kingdom? Did people really know Jesus better because of his work in me? Is here even a point to me going on the race? I was measuring my worth by my accomplishments and the people I have helped and I was very frustrated with the results. These thoughts began to get increasingly worse until about two weeks before launch in a very deep conversation I had with my cousin who was able to shed some wisdom on the topic.
He shared with me the work God was doing in his life and how God, in the midst of his sin, used his suffering and the consequences of it to really bring him much closer to the Lord and how he used it to demonstrate his love to some of his surrounding friends. He summarized God’s work in our lives is like a tapestry which we only see from the back. All we see is a mess of interconnected and tangled strings and threads that apparently has no rhyme or meaning. As we stare at this nonsense conglomeration of entanglement, God is continuously adding more and more knots and kinks and often times the “masterpiece” looks more and more like a mess. However, if we look not at the back of the master piece we realize God is writing a very beautiful story of redemption and grace and no matter how worthless the tapestry that is our lives appear to us, God is weaving it together for his glory and ultimately our good. The following day my pastor preaches a message using the very same analogy to describe our lives. The sermon was part of a series called it’s a wonderful life. It was based on the movie about a man who thought his life only had a negative impact on everyone around him and his despair was so deep that it led him to want to commit suicide. Then, all of a sudden an angel appears to him and shows him a glimpse of what life looks like if he were never born. This heavenly perspective helps him realize that the empty chasm of his life does have impact and lasting value even when he couldn’t see it.
Ultimately, I found peace over my thought life, over all my fears, over all my feelings of inadequacy because I caught a glimpse of my life through heaven’s eyes. I realized that many of my fears came from the possibility of not making an impact. Then, I realized it was never my burden to begin with, to change people’s lives or be the savior (that is why Jesus came). Instead as I read scripture, I see God inviting ordinary people with ordinary lives to participate in a work that He is doing. That is the difference between fear and boldness. You can walk in boldness when you know the Father’s heart and you know what he is doing because you know it is not you who does it but it is God. I alone, apart from the Father can do nothing. This became increasingly apparent to me in a quiet time I recently had with the Lord in which I read Exodus 3-4, the story of God who calls Moses to free his people, the Israelites from slavery. Moses up until that point had spent 40 years of his life as a shepherd in hiding. He sought to run from his former sin of neglect for his people, and murder. If anyone had reasons for not wanting to go back to Egypt it was him. However, God in his wisdom and grace invites Moses to take part in perhaps on of the most miraculous displays of his power and glory the world has ever seen.
I see so much of myself in Moses. He had a fear of speaking in Public to people. He did not do well in the past in speaking with boldness and he spent a large portion of his life in a period of dormancy in which it felt as if God was silent and in which his life may have seemed a bit mundane. Unbeknownst to Moses, God had been planning to use Moses mightily to be a leader to his Chosen people, the Israelites, out of slavery and into the promised land that God had already promised his forefathers hundreds of years before. Moses met God with great resistance. His fears and concerns were extremely apparent. He walked up to God with an empty hand and with nothing to offer God and instead of focusing on what God was inviting him to do, he focused on his empty hand and all of his limitations and failures. If only Moses knew the heart and power of God, he would not have even objected once to God’s command to go beck to Egypt. He would have recognized the invitation to participate in God’s work realized that the burden of change and power was all on God and he was just there for the ride.
I look back at my situation here in Colombia and I think of all God has been doing here and how much of it, I would have missed if I had let me fear of failure and my doubts about my own self prevent me from joining in on what I saw God doing. All the people, I have seen come to Christ since I have been here, all the smiles and amazing conversations I have had, the lives I have seen God transform and I think to myself that I almost let a fear stop me from participating in one of the biggest blessings God has given me so far. I have seen myself stretch beyond a lot of my fears and step into a position of boldness. God has stretched me so far beyond my comfort level and he intends to stretch me far beyond my current capacities. Bottom line, look around at where God has put you, find where he is at work, join him in his work and you will have nothing to fear because your Father in heaven is watching you and will give you everything you need when you need it and work all things for your good, if you Love Christ.
Thank you for reading this blog post. I intend to write with more frequency in these coming weeks, especially more about what God is doing here in Colombia.
