Giver of Good Gifts

 

            Everyone who knows my dad knows that he is a giver – and a good giver at that. I can’t count the memories I have of him paying not only for our family’s meals but also for the meals of whomever we happened to be eating out with. If he has something that he knows someone else could really use, he’d much rather give it than sell it. His gifts are given without hidden motives of manipulation or control, and he gives much more than just material gifts. Dozens of people have been on the receiving end of his time, expertise, and teaching when it comes to home repairs and improvements, computer troubleshooting, and any number of other forms of analytical puzzles.

            My dad is such an excellent reflection of God as a giver that I’m embarrassed at how I could even try to justify my recent doubts regarding God’s goodness and generosity. My parents themselves are good gifts from God. He has proven Himself time and time again to be faithfully good and generous in providing for Jon and I financially, emotionally, spiritually, physically, socially, and mentally through marital and ministry trials, through multiple moves and job changes, through medical messes, and so much more. He has used so many people to bless us beyond what we could have ever asked for, and He has never forsaken us. It’s absurd, really, to doubt while having the examples that I do in my parents and having seen all that I’ve seen God do in my own life.

            Yet, I’ve still struggled with suspicion. I’ve still wrestled with trusting an all-powerful heavenly Father who has allowed my womb to stay barren when I know my earthly parents (and SO many other friends and family members) would do anything in their power to allow me to have a child. I’ve cried angry tears over Psalm 127 and James 1:17. I’ve wondered if God just doesn’t love me enough or if I don’t love God enough. I’ve prayed until it felt pointless, and I’ve crowded God out with activity – along with all my conflicting feelings about Him.

            Therein lies the problem. It’s hard to see anyone clearly from a distance. James 1:17, as much as it has tormented me, makes it abundantly clear that if anyone has moved or changed, it is not God. So, it must be me. I know it is me. But, if I come near to God again, then who does that leave me to blame? Who else would take the brunt of my anger and disappointment?

            I recently finished Lysa Terkeurst’s book titled It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way. In it, she masterfully gives the reader space and grace to suffer and grieve while also guiding the reader gently back onto the life-giving path toward Christ. She explains that we are between two gardens: the Garden of Eden and the restored Eden of the book of Revelation. God created all things perfect, and we have that perfection etched into our DNA like a faint memory, which is why anything less than perfection stings and disappoints us so badly. God has also provided the way and is working toward restoring all things to that perfection, which gives us hope for the future. However, we live in the middle space where sin is still messing things up, and the harsh dissonance of disappointment still clangs in our ears.

            Learning to trust God and wrestle well through the noise of suffering and disappointment is part of His work in transforming us. Lysa goes on in her book to use the illustration of dust and pottery. God often uses the times in our lives that reduce us to ashes to provide the material to make something even more beautiful and strong. She says, “If our souls never ached with disappointments and disillusionments, we’d never fully admit and submit to our need for God. If we weren’t ever shattered we’d never know the glorious touch of the Potter making something glorious out of dust, out of us.” These illustrations and teachings have been helpful to me in coming to understand and accept the things I see God doing (or not doing) in my own life and learning to trust His process.

            I know God is not maliciously withholding anything from me; that is not His character. He is the good giver of all perfect gifts, and he gives generously and freely. I also know that He sees more than what I can see both in Jon’s and my circumstances and in our hearts. He knows what we need more than we do, and just because He hasn’t given us a child yet doesn’t mean He hasn’t wanted to give us that gift or that He won’t still in the future. He is not a performance-driven God who would require me to love Him a certain amount before rewarding me with a child, and He has already given the greatest demonstration of His own love for me in the sacrifice of His Son. These are the truths I need to remember and to choose to believe. God is generous and good, and I can trust that He is making something beautiful from the ashes.

           In the meantime, He has given me a few things to work on. If you are struggling with trusting God’s goodness, I invite you to join me in these.

1. Stay close to Him. Pushing Him away only exacerbates the problem because I start losing sight of who He is and start believing the lies.
2. Give Him the glory. I just read in Judges 7 about how God wouldn’t let the full Israelite army fight against the Midianites under Gideon because He knew they would be tempted to think that their own power and might won the battle. He whittled the army down to three hundred men and used them to take down Midianites and Amalekites “as numerous as locusts” (Judges 7:12). I can’t try to control or fix everything myself, and any progress I make is only because of Him. Worshipping God also keeps my heart in a posture of peaceful submission.
3. Celebrate the victories. I’ve been too focused on a pregnancy being the only victory. That mindset lends itself to overlooking or downplaying all that God is doing right now, which in turn leads to doubting Him again. For example, I have slowly but surely been making leaps and bounds health-wise. Shark week has almost earned itself a new name as my husband has come through relatively unscathed for several months now. My moods are so much more stable in that regard!
4. Reframe. I am learning how powerful the mind is and how much my whole being – body, heart, mind, and spirit – is affected by what I think. Side note – this is probably why God transforms us by renewing our minds (Rom. 12:2). Anyway, I’m learning some techniques to manage stress in addition to learning how to turn negative thinking around on its head. For example, instead of thinking “this sucks – I’m still not pregnant this month,” I can think, “I’m glad God designed my body in such a way that it knows when pregnancy is not a good idea.”

            Choose to believe God. Trust His goodness, His generosity, and His process. Wrestle well through disappointment. Find hope in the future of eternity. Obey God when He asks you to do something. Get back up when you fall.

Don't forget to find We Are Seen on social media or sign up for e-mail updates!

(I promise not to spam you ☺)

Trusting the One Who Sees What We Can't See

            This weekend I had to drive home in some pretty dense fog after dark.  I prayed before I left, and the road in front of me and the traffic around me stayed visible through the duration of the trip.  I was thankful to have the visibility I needed to drive confidently and get where I needed to go, but I still hated not being able to see much to either side of the road.  The deer are plentiful in this area, and though it was past dusk, I remained tense and alert to anything that might jump out in front of me.  The fog that swallowed up the fields and creeks around me brought back memories of cloudy, new moon nights of driving in the sparsely populated expanses of Wyoming.  The darkness was so heavy that it almost made me feel like I was suspended in space and about to fall.  Driving in oceans of fog or darkness, with all of the hidden creatures and landscapes, is just an eerie, unsettling experience when I focus on all of the unknowns and what-ifs of the unseen.             

            The same discomfort and fear creeps into my heart sometimes when I focus on the unknowns of what I can’t see in my life.  Often, God only shows us just what we need to get where He wants us to go.  Most of us don’t like that.  We think that if we could just see a little bit of the future – or all of it for that matter – that we could make better choices and avoid ever getting hurt.  We want the sense of control that comes with being able to make independent decisions based on all available information without having to trust God.  Yet, Jesus submitted Himself to the Father and trusted Him.  Jesus endured unspeakable suffering and hardship because the prize was worth the pain.  We do not become more like Christ by living independently or by seeking trouble-free lives.  Someday, we will in practice be what we are already in position – complete and mature in Christ.  In that day, there will be no more tears, sorrow, pain, or death.  But for now, we sometimes need the chipping, the burning, and the scraping of hardship to shape us, strengthen us, and refine us.  God knows this, and He also knows that most of us would run from it if we could.  In doing so, we would remain ineffectual, incomplete, and infantile in our spirituality and in our mission. 

            I still remember sitting at Donna’s (one of my primary Bible teachers and mentors) house and talking about this very thing during my high school years and first couple years of college – years that for many involve lots of big decisions in the midst of a sea of unknowns and waiting.  She told me that if God did allow us to see everything, we would more than likely wish He hadn’t.  He gives us strength to face the things that we have to face today.  There might be a lion waiting for us on the road ahead, and if we were to see it now, we would be faint or paralyzed in fear.  We would be distracted from the things that we needed to face today.  Knowledge is not always empowering; sometimes, it is crippling.  God is merciful in showing us just what we need to see when we need to see it, and He gives us the strength that is needed when it is needed – not before.

            Just like He gave me the visibility I needed to get home this weekend, God has given us exactly what we need to be able to do and to become what He asks of us today.  We do our part by obeying and submitting to what He has revealed.  We allow ourselves to be made better in our suffering instead of being made bitter.  We remain alert and prepared for the deer that may jump out as we follow the path before us, but we do not cower in fear or grasp for desperate control of the uncontrollable.  We do what God has set before us, and we trust Him with the rest.  He loves us, and He is trustworthy.                                

Don't forget to find We Are Seen on social media or sign up for e-mail updates!

(I promise not to spam you ☺)

Trusting God When it Seems Illogical

          As I read Joshua 11 on Saturday morning, I found myself having flashbacks to the movie from the night before.  Every now and then, Jon and I get a craving to watch The Lord of the Rings again.  We watched The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers a few months ago, but we weren’t able to get to The Return of the King until Friday night (our date night was long overdue, and we finally slowed down enough to do it in part because I slipped on our icy front porch with my hands full and nailed my knees and chin on the concrete).  While reading about the kings and their armies that were amassing to fight against Israel in the first three verses of Joshua 11, I couldn’t help but remember the swarms of orcs, trolls, and men with their oliphaunts, battering rams, and catapults marching toward Minas Tirith, the capital of Gondor, in the Battle of Pelennor Fields.  They far outnumbered the forces of Gondor and its allies, and their weapons and resources were much more impressive and menacing.  With a few substitutions, verse 4 could have easily been describing that particular scene in the movie: “They came out, they and all their armies with them, as many people as the sand that is on the seashore, with very many horses and chariots.”

Human logic dictates that it would be foolish for Joshua to lead Israel, a nation of former slaves and wanderers, into such a mismatched battle.  How could they possibly continue their conquest of the Promised Land with so many kings of the land united together?  They had every earthly reason to cower in fear.  Retreating in disobedience would have been easier than continuing in the face of such adversity.  However, Israel had seen God work on their behalf in miraculous, if not seemingly illogical, ways before.  He tore down the wall of Jericho with seven days of marching and a shout, He finished off the alliance of five kings with large hailstones, and He even stopped the sun when Joshua asked.  With the arrival of this sea of warriors, God once again told Joshua, “Do not be afraid because of them, for tomorrow at this time I will deliver all of them slain before Israel; you shall hamstring their horses and burn their chariots with fire” (v. 6).  Joshua knew what many people today still don’t understand:

Isaiah 31:1

“Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help

And rely on horses,

And trust in chariots because they are many

And in horsemen because they are very strong,

But they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the Lord!”

Psalm 20:7   

“Some boast in chariots and some in horses, but we will boast in the name of the LORD, our God.”

Romans 8:31

“What then shall we say to these things?  If God is for us, who is against us?”

            When God is on your side, fear and disobedience become the illogical choices, regardless of how daunting and impossible your circumstances appear to be.  When God asks you to do something or to endure something, He will not abandon you.  He will provide exactly what is needed when it is needed, and you can be confident that His purpose will prevail.  It may not be painless or effortless on your part, but the outcome will be worth it, even if that outcome is not revealed until this earth has passed away.  He is the only one in whom we can place all of our trust. 

            Who or what are you trusting in today?  The nations that came against Israel trusted in their own power and their own resources, and they were completely slaughtered.  Joshua trusted God and His promises and obeyed His commands; as a result, he was victorious in accomplishing what God had commanded him to do.  I know I am easily tempted to trust in my own strength and resources, but apart from God, I have nothing and can do nothing of eternal value.  Finances, jobs, loved ones, homes, abilities, freedom, and sharpness of mind can all disappear more quickly than the vapor of your breath on a chilled window.  The very things we want to put all our weight on when times get tough shift and cave out from underneath us.  Our heavenly Father is our only firm foundation, our only steady ground, our only unfailing rescuer, and our only everlasting strength.  If we rely on Him, He will carry us through all that He asks us to do and face.                  

Don't forget to find We Are Seen on social media or sign up for e-mail updates!

(I promise not to spam you ☺)

Trust Issues & Lone Wolves

            We all want to believe that we can face anything on our own.  Maybe God can help a little, but we certainly don’t want to need other people.  Like the toddler who wants to do everything herself, we feel we have to prove to ourselves and to everyone else that we are strong, brave, courageous, fierce, independent, self-sufficient, and grown-up.  Besides, other people come with far too much risk.  We’ve been down that vulnerable road before, and it didn’t end well.

            The trouble is God didn’t create us to operate as lone wolves.  He placed within us an innate need for deep, real, raw relationships – not just with Himself, but with other people as well.  Sin certainly makes relationships hard.  Some of us have been shaken to our core by the lies, betrayal, cheating, insensitivity, and manipulation dealt to us by the most unexpected of sources.  Only a small taste of such use and abuse can make the sheltered life of the lone wolf suddenly appear irresistibly attractive. 

            If that is where you are, I am genuinely so sorry for the very real and legitimate wounds that have brought you to this place.  However, can I encourage you not to give up completely on allowing yourself to trust other people and to be open with them?  Obviously, we need to have discernment with regard to whom we trust, and we don’t have to let the whole world see our entire lives.  Nevertheless, I’ve struggled alone and I’ve struggled alongside others, and I can tell you that the benefits of being transparent (even if it’s only with a few) far outweigh the risks associated with being close to other sinful people.  Here are five of the benefits I have found in allowing myself to be vulnerable:   

1.  Intimacy (Closeness)

       Relationships are built around knowing and being known.  The more we know, the tighter the bond between us becomes (even though the risk also becomes much higher for greater hurts).  Our unseen hearts, the truest depths of who we are, long to be seen and understood.  We want close bonds.  Close marriages, close friendships, and other close family relationships cannot exist where one or both of the parties refuse to be vulnerable.  If we hold back from being truly known by anyone else, we forfeit the closeness that we so desperately crave.       

2.  Ability to Help Others

       Being open about your own struggles provides opportunities to make a difference in the lives of those you may never have been able to otherwise.  Often, a gesture of transparency and trust on one side allows the other person to feel safe enough to reciprocate that transparency and trust.  Needs to which you would have been completely oblivious suddenly become rich opportunities for service.   

3.  Ability to Receive Help

       When we’ve been hurt, our natural instinct is to put up tall, foreboding, impermeable walls of distrust.  Those walls we build in an attempt to protect ourselves from more pain end up becoming our prison.  No one can come in to hurt, but no one can come in to help either.  Inadvertently, we lock ourselves away alone with our struggles where they can slowly eat away at us from the inside out – crippling us to the point where we don’t even recognize who we are anymore. 

Ecclesiastes 4:9, 10

 

4.  Strength for Your Weakness

       God made us with our own unique set of strengths and weaknesses.  No one is strong in every area.  When we allow people into our hearts and lives, their strengths can balance out our weaknesses so that we are stronger together than when we were apart.  We can learn from each other, keep each other accountable, and spur each other on in the areas where we are lacking.      

5.  Hope

       When I’ve tried to face trials alone, all I can see is the mountain in front of me and the fact that God has not chosen to move it yet.  When I’ve walked alongside others in the same struggle as a result of being transparent, I still see my own mountain, but I also see how God is currently working and moving the mountains that my friends are facing.  Seeing Him work in the lives of others gives me hope that He hasn’t forgotten me and that I will eventually see His work in my own life clearly.

I am so thankful for the many people God has placed in my life in different times and different places.  Yes, I’ve been hurt by some (just as I have hurt others), but those hurts cannot compare with what I’ve gained by allowing people into my heart.  I cannot adequately express just how valuable many of those relationships have been to me.  To all those who have walked with me (and are currently walking with me) in the darkness and the haziness that life sometimes brings, thank you for your vulnerability, for your transparency, and for your trust.  Thank you for being a safe place. To those who are reading this who have never experienced what it is like to do life with other people – real, raw, unfiltered life –  please find your people!  If you don’t know how, talk to God about it.  Talk to me about it.  Talk to someone about it until you can find your safe people.  We need each other, whether we like it or not.      

           

Stability in Shifting Sands

            Bounce houses were never overly appealing to me as a child.  They were okay until  some of the older, bigger kids joined in, and I found myself struggling to stay upright for more than a millisecond.  With a perpetually and dramatically shifting surface underfoot, I would get tossed around, stuck in the side crevices, and then inevitably end up emerging a little motion sick.  Sometimes life feels like a bounce house.  In the midst of ever-shifting circumstances, surroundings, relationships, and feelings, we can come out feeling bruised, leery, guarded, and cynical.  When nothing seems certain or unchanging, we start looking desperately for something steady and reliable to hold on to.  It's as though we are being swiftly carried away by a river, and we desperately need a rock or a branch to grab onto before we drown.  At times, we may think we have found security in something or someone, but eventually it always dissipates like sand through our fingers.  In other moments, we give up and just try to find ways to numb ourselves to the pain, disappointment, and disillusionment. 

We can find true, perfect, and complete stability, security, and peace in only one place, which is described by two of my very favorite verses.  Isaiah 26:3, 4 says,

                        “The steadfast of mind You will keep in perfect peace,

                        Because he trusts in You.

                        Trust in the LORD forever,

                        For in GOD, the LORD, we have an everlasting Rock.”

               

He is our solid ground, our steady hand, and our unchanging Father.  I love how much verse four emphasizes the eternity of God.  The Hebrew word for “LORD” refers to God’s self-existence, and “GOD” is simply a shorter form of that same name.  He always has been, He is, and He always will be.  If you include the word “everlasting,” that makes four times that the writer emphasizes God’s self-existence and eternity in this one verse.  These terms don’t just refer to the span of His existence, but to the steadfastness of His very character.  Unlike we humans who are constantly changing, He didn’t used to be a different person, and He isn’t becoming a different person.  He is.  What a secure and steady Rock He is in whom we can wholly place our trust! 

As we trust in Him and let our minds rest and lean on Him (the KJV, NKJV, and ESV all translate the phrase in verse 3 as those whose minds are “stayed on” You), He keeps us in “perfect peace.”  I have only climbed a rock wall a handful of times, but this concept of leaning and trusting reminds me of the trip back down the wall with a belayer.  I remember having to lean back in my harness and trust both the equipment and the belayer to bring me back to the ground safely.  I had peace because I knew that the equipment was sound and the belayer was experienced.  Though equipment may brake and people may fail, our God never fails, and He offers us a peace to which nothing in this world can even compare.  He is the safe place.  Though life may try to fling us around, we always have this anchor to which we can cling if we would only choose: our everlasting Rock.                           

A Life Unexpected (Part 5)

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

-C.S. Lewis

            Some of my sweetest memories are of sitting alone outside with God.  Several of these instances took place behind the chapel at Bible school.  The town was small and fairly still with the exception of the bustling of the students and the occasional mooing of cows in the distance.  As I enjoyed the various shapes of puffy clouds against the bright blue of the sky and examined the intricacies of all the different uncomfortable rocks on which I sat, I talked to God.  Unhurried and surrounded by comfortable silence, I told him whatever was on my heart and mind, I read some of His Word, and I thought about who He was as I drank in my surroundings.  Then, I would wait.  Sometimes, I could almost hear Him answer my frustrations and my questions in my heart.  Often, I already knew the answers, but I just needed to be reminded and reassured.  He was always so gentle and so patient, but direct. 

It was in one of these times that I told Him that He could do anything with my life.  In particular, I told Him that I would keep loving and serving Him even if that meant that my dreams of marriage never came true or that I would be living in some awful mud hut in a foreign land (just please, Lord, keep the snakes far away!).  I told Him I was willing and that I wanted to be obedient, and I meant it with every fiber of my being.  As crazy as it sounds, indescribable peace filled my heart, and fear had no more place.  As I have experienced different trials and allowed myself to drift away in doubt, discouragement, and fear, I have found that the quickest way back to that sweet place of peace, surrender, and fellowship is the way that I arrived there in the first place: by remembering who I am and whose I am.

Who I Am

           When trying to define myself, I am often tempted to list off describing qualities, such as: wife, babysitter, organizer, musician, etc.  In reality, these titles refer to my roles, jobs, behaviors, and hobbies and fall far short when it comes to determining who I really am.  If I found my identity in them, then I would be completely lost should they be changed or taken away.  Fortunately, my identity is much more stable, and God has told me what it is.  As a believer in Christ, I am:

And SO MUCH MORE!

This identity (or position) is at the core of every believer, and it cannot be lost.  Neither does it originate within the believer, but it is the gift Christ gives us of Himself.  We believers don’t always act in accordance with this identity, but that does not change the fact of who we are in Christ.  Paul understood this truth better than most.  He had an impressive earthly pedigree and resume, which he outlined briefly in Philippians 3:5, 6.  Continuing on in the passage, we see that he considered all of it to be a loss in comparison with knowing Christ and being found in Him.  Christ’s righteousness in him was far superior to any feeble righteousness that he could muster up on his own.  Paul’s earthly successes were garbage compared to the value of the life he could live in Christ.  He admitted that he was not complete and perfect in living out his identity in Christ, but he also knew that on this earth he was to press on in growing more like Christ and becoming in practice who he already was in his position.  This type of thinking is completely illogical to the world, which is why Paul also pointed to one very crucial aspect of the believer’s identity – that of being citizens of heaven.        

The fact that I am a citizen of heaven is one of the most encouraging truths to me in times of difficulty.  This life is not all there is, which gives me hope.  I was not made to fit into this world’s mold and to constantly chase after the ever-elusive goals of temporary self-fulfillment, success, pleasure, and happiness.  I was made for lasting joy, for meaningful worship, for deep fellowship, for liberating rest, and for eternity.  I was made to last and to be in a relationship with the one who always was, is, and will be.      

Whose I Am

            Understanding who we are is only part of the equation.  We must also understand whose we are.  I know I have touched on this in previous posts, but the answer to living a life unexpected really all boils down to this.  We are not our own.  We belong to Christ – to God.  He has not hidden His character from us.  In His Word, He has revealed that He is:

And, again, SO MUCH MORE!

            He loves us so much, and He does not find joy in our pain.  Many cultures in many ages have believed in gods who required blood sacrifices to cover the sins of man.  The one true God also required blood to cover sin, but He Himself came down and met the requirement that His character demanded.  He could have left us as lost causes to die and be separated from Him forever.  We deserve just that.  Instead, the Creator laid down His life to save us, though He knew many of us would turn our backs on Him, hate Him, and trample all over His sacrifice.  He could not give us a greater demonstration of His love.  We will suffer in this life, but only for a little while.  For those who have trusted in Christ, we know that we will have an eternity of the life that He offers, which far surpasses any short, self-pleasing life that we can dream up on this earth.  We get little tastes of that heavenly life when we take the time to worship Him for who He is and rest in the identity He has given to us.  For those who haven’t trusted in Christ, He wants you to come to Him.  He wants to have a relationship with you and to give you an identity and a purpose that are secure.  You weren’t made to go through this life alone.  We can trust Him to lead us through a life unexpected.                                         

A Life Unexpected (Part 1)

“Where You go, I’ll go.  Where You stay, I’ll stay.”

-“I Will Follow” by Chris Tomlin, Jason Ingram, & Reuben Morgan

The caterpillar sat on a small branch with the front third of his fuzzy body stretched up to the sky. 

“I was born to fly!” he exclaimed, “I just know it!”

He was tired of spending his entire days eating and crawling, and he was certain that he was made for something more.  But try as he may, he could not lift his little non-aerodynamic body off of the branch.

Okay, so I may have read The Very Hungry Caterpillar entirely too many times in the past couple of weeks to the little boy I babysit, but this scenario provides a pretty good picture of how my husband and I have felt this past year.  Before I dive into an explanation, I need to give you a little bit of background.  Last December, God very suddenly pulled us out of full-time ministry.  We absolutely know that it needed to happen, but the necessity of the removal doesn’t change the fact that we were ripped away from a life that we absolutely loved.  For a year and a half, we were passionate about the work we were doing, and we felt like we were fulfilling God’s purpose and call for our lives by using the talents and abilities He had given us to serve Him.  Out of the blue, it all came crashing down around us, and we found ourselves carried away in a whirlwind back to the area where we attended Bible college.  Since then, our heart has always been (and still is) to return to full-time ministry eventually.  However, God has not yet given us the privilege of doing that.

In the meantime, we have been focusing on healing, growing, and learning in the midst of the daily grind of a life we didn’t choose or want.  In the beginning, I desperately needed the break from full-time ministry, so even though I was grieving heavily, it was fairly easy for me to welcome this next chapter of our story.  However, as the months have passed and I have experienced more and more healing, I have found myself battling the discontent that wants to slowly creep into my heart.  I ache with the memories of spending each day taking care of my husband and the house and working alongside him to reach into the lives of those around us in various ways.  I especially miss the Sunday nights of laughing, playing, and discussing Biblical truth with the youth and watching my husband teach them.  Without a doubt, ministry had its own set of challenges, but there’s no other way we would rather spend our lives.  Yet, that desire seems so out of reach at times.  God has been gracious to allow us to help with leading worship at our new church, and He has given us a few short windows to help with youth events every once in a while.  While we are truly grateful for the opportunities we’ve been given, we still wish that we could devote more time to ministry.  My husband and I have both struggled off and on and to different degrees with feeling like that caterpillar this year: frustrated and stuck to the tree branch when we really want to fly. 

As I was wrestling with all of this again recently, God directed my thoughts to the life of His Son.  For each struggle that entered my mind, He reminded me of a relatable situation in Jesus’s life, thereby showing that He understands exactly what I am going through:

1)  In some ways, our current situation feels like a huge step backward from where we were.  We know that’s not true, but it’s hard to get our hearts on board with what we know.  Jesus is fully God, but He humbled Himself and came to earth as a human in the absolute lowest and most helpless of ways.  What a seemingly backwards transformation!  Logic says that this must have been a derailing of the fulfillment of His true calling and purpose.  Yet, He was right where God wanted Him to be and where we needed Him to be.  This humbling transformation was not a deviation from the course or a backslide.  It was the very fulfillment of His purpose for that time.

2) We work hard because God tells us to be faithful, but sometimes it feels like we are wasting precious time investing ourselves into our secular jobs.  This is not to say that our work is at all meaningless or unimportant, but it isn’t what we  really want to do, what we believe we were really designed to do, or what we believe we are called to do in the long run.  Jesus worked as a carpenter until He was thirty. 

3) I struggle with worrying about what other people think about our situation, though I know that God is the only One I should worry about pleasing.  People thought all sorts of things about Jesus.  Some thought He was from Satan.  Others thought he was a crazy person, a liar, a pretender, and a blasphemer.  Still others thought He was just a good man or a good teacher.  The truth is all that really matters, and God sees the truth.

4) We have been tempted to rush ahead of God into ministry without really seeking His will.  Jesus was also presented with the opportunity to rush ahead of the plan when Satan tempted Him in the wilderness with all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 

Jesus understands what we are going through, which brings me comfort.  He shows me that I am equating ministry too much with serving God.  Ministry is certainly one expression of service, but service to God is ultimately obeying Him.  Obedience may look very different from what we expect.  The caterpillar is indeed made to fly in due time, but it is also made to eat and crawl in order to develop.  God is not only concerned about what we do, but who we are.  He sees our complete transformation and all of the works that He prepared in advance for us to do throughout that transformation.  Sometimes our job is to go.  Sometimes our job is to stay.  Either way, our bigger job is to trust Him, to obey Him, and to be faithful to what He has called us to do today.