Hello again, friends. It seems it has been awhile since I’ve been here with you, and I certainly have felt the absence these past few weeks. Just yesterday, I completed a Bible study I have been going through for months, and the completion of it sparked something inside of me.
Ending one chapter and beginning something new isn’t always exciting and thrilling. Sometimes, it’s sad and difficult. Other times it’s scary. We get used to what we know, and change can be one of the most difficult things.
As I completed the last page of this study and flipped the book closed, I felt that.
“Now what?”
It’s easy to stay in charted waters. It’s easy to keep doing the same old same old. It’s far more difficult to look forward into the unknown and trust the God who is calling you out into it.
So, I sat on this in my kitchen yesterday, pondering what He might have for me next. I feel as if I’ve been somewhat silent after a very busy and productive year of ministry. I have been feeling as if I might not have much more to say. And as I’ve allowed those thoughts to take root in my mind and heart, something began to happen. A slow fade, really.
Doubt.
“God, did you really call me to this? Am I really capable of this? Did you really choose me for this?”
And around and around we can go down that path. Still, there is one thing I learned over a decade ago in Bible study that has stuck with me and will stick with me for as long as I live. When I say learned, I don’t mean “heard.” We hear all sorts of things. We sit under teaching all the time. To “hear” does not equal to “learn.” When I say “learn,” I mean that God finally got this truth down deep inside my bones. It transferred from head knowledge to heart knowledge. Here it is:
“God’s timing is always perfect. He’s never late. He’s rarely early, but He’s always on time.”
So, as I sat in my kitchen again this morning with my coffee and blueberries, I wasn’t really surprised that my time in His Word addressed this very doubt that I’ve been struggling with. I found myself on the pages of Luke 1 where Mary is told that she will indeed give birth to Jesus Christ Himself. Of all of the BIG things I’m faced with in this life, of all of the large things that God entrusts me with, I simply cannot imagine being given that responsibility. Doubt? You bet I would struggle with it in the face of such news! “Me? Really, God? You want ME to birth and raise your Son, the Savior of the World? You must have the wrong girl!”
Her response amazes me, though. She humbly accepts the plans that God has for her. That’s it. She doesn’t demand to know the “how.” She simply says “yes” to God.
What if you and I did the same today? What if we just said “yes” to God? How many things that we have disqualified ourselves for would suddenly not seem so impossible because our God knows no limits? The beauty of the God we love and serve is that He not only refuses to have favorites, but He doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called. Did you get that? Because He will forever use broken people to accomplish His will and purposes on this earth, He will equip those whom He calls, because He then will receive the glory. If Mary were royal, rich, and prestigious, it wouldn’t seem like such an awesome thing that she gave birth to our King, would it? BUT, she was young, poor, unmarried, and according to the society in which she lived, insignificant.
Have you allowed the culture in which we are emerged to determine what you are capable of or what you are qualified for? Or, do you allow God to determine that? Don’t disqualify yourself for that which God has already equipped you. He’s going to do it in and through you. He’s going to make a way. He’s going to provide.
“Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19
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