Hey Y'all! Welcome to 2016! I hope it's been going well for you so far. I've been having an interesting couple of weeks so far, but I have faith that the rest of this year is going to be full of God's grace and favor!!
In case you don't know, a brief overview is that I am leaving in a month to staff another DTS with YWAM. I wasn't expecting to do that again, but God put it back on my heart while I was in Bible school, so here I am: having spent all my savings to go to Bible school, needing to raise enough support to go back, turning down a scholarship from my college to postpone my degree for who knows how much longer, not having taken any downtime to just sit and draw in weeks, and seeing deadlines fast approaching with hardly any progress to show for it. Oh yeah, and remembering to breath...that's important. This is a moment of pretty raw honesty for me because I would much prefer to be that person who doesn't freak out. (Consider yourselves privileged to witness this rare event, and keep in mind that this is just the tail end of it) I've gone and done crazy things without hesitation because I knew that God was with me. I've walked in faith for miracles and seen Him provide again and again in ways that blew my mind every time. Trusting God is something that only makes sense, and yet somehow I still find myself once again holding tension over such a silly little thing as the number in my bank account. What's that about?! On the practical side, it's a lot to worry about. It determines the course of both my immediate and long-term future. And yet God says not to worry about what we will eat or what we will wear because He is the one who feeds the birds and clothes the fields, so how much more is He going to watch over my needs as His child?! He's always been the one to call me out to do crazy things and He's always been the one to make it possible. This was never my idea (though I am so grateful that He has called me to it), so it's a little ridiculous to think that it's suddenly up to me to somehow pay for God's plans. In fact, He's been really convicting me of that because as soon as I think that it's up to my own ability to raise support, I take it out of His capability to open those doors for me. Ouch...sorry, God. One thing He used to speak to me about that was the story of Gideon. Gideon faced odds that no one else would have been willing to go up against, simply because he knew God was with him. He started out with a small army that paled in comparison to the force he was about to go up against, but God still had him send most of the men home. Why? Because God wanted Gideon to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was absolutely nothing he could do to win. If those 300 men were going to survive against thousands of Midianites, it was only going to happen because God did something amazing. And He did! God called Gideon to do something completely impossible so He could show him that it was God's victory, not man's. So even though I feel like I'm being called to something impossible right now, I too can rest assured that God's got it covered. It's one thing to think and even say that - I can tell myself that I trust God to provide for me, and I often have - but then God posed a question that was tough to answer: Am I living like I trust Him to provide for me? If I truly believed that God was going to provide every penny that I will need, how would I live and interact with people differently? The answer was hard to swallow when I realized that I would live very differently than I have been recently. I would probably be a lot less stressed out, for one. I would take more time to draw and to write; I would spend more time reading my Bible in the mornings because I wouldn't pack my schedule so tightly. I would still want to spend a lot of time with people, but I probably wouldn't feel that awkward pressure to ask for money all the time, so I could actually enjoy the time spent a lot more. In general, I would be a lot more like the me that I want to be, instead of this worked-up saleswoman that I hate feeling like I've become. So where's the middle ground? I want to be all-in and proactive in partnering with what God's doing, but not take this burden all on myself. I also want to be able to fully surrender this to God and let Him be the one in control without stepping back into passivity. HOW DO I DO THIS?!?! It's genuinely driving me a little crazy! All I know and all I can lean back on is this: I know that God has a plan for me that is far greater than any plans I can make for myself. I know that God blesses His children who walk in faith, and my biggest prayer right now is that I would be filled with faith and given His perspective of the situation so I can walk without fear or stress and claim the favor that He has placed on my life. God blessed Joseph in everything he put his hands to because he walked in the favor of The Lord. Likewise, I want to walk in the path the God has set out for my life and give Him all of the glory so that I can be a partner in His kingdom and make a difference in the world and lives around me.
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