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| Silverwood Lake - San Bernardino Mountains - California by Ken Hulsey |
Today instead of sharing insights on scripture I want to share my own personal struggle with serving God. I recently decided to submit my life to God's will. I had come to the point in my life when I realized that when I don't consult God on matters, and do things my way, things generally end up all screwed up.
When you make such a commitment to God you have be aware that He will make opportunities to test you on just how honest you were about it. Such was the case this past week.
On Friday our son-in-law Steven Roberts, who is a pastor at Journey Church, called with a rather large dilemma. It seems that a rather large number flyers for the church's upcoming Easter celebration had yet to be distributed. Three-thousand to be precise. A number of church members had signed on board to hang the packets, which included a flyer, information about the church and three plastic eggs with candy inside, but had to back out for one reason or another.
Steven was charged to get those Easter invites out and he needed Terri and I to step up in a big way.
Terri and I agreed to split the remaining packets with him, a mere 1500. When Steven showed up Friday night with fifteen large garbage bags my heart sank. It was just a week prior when Terri and I had passed out eighty such packets here in Lecompte. It took us about three hours to get those all hung on doors around the neighborhood and afterword we were pretty worn out.
Now we had 1500.
I woke up Saturday morning and stared at the large at the large stack of bags in our dining room. I have to confess that I was tired from a rough week and work and I had no desire to spend my Saturday passing out these packets. I couldn't figure out an effective way to get then all passed out and I knew that going door to door again would take forever.
It was at that time I started making up excuses in my own mind so that I wouldn't have to do it.
Unknown to me Terri was having the same doubts and wanted very much to quit before we even got started.
After talking about our doubts and concerns about the monumental task ahead of us Terri wisely recommended that we both split up and go spend some time in quiet prayer alone. She went to her usual spot in our spare bedroom while I opted to go outside and sit underneath the trees.
During my quiet time of conversation with God I expressed my concerns, fears, and confessed my selfish desires. I asked Him for motivation, a means of carrying out the task productively and forgiveness. What I really wanted was a quick and easy way to pass out 1500 packets.
The Lord didn't provide one. There simply wasn't a quick fix to our dilemma.
Ultimately Terri and I opted to drive around Alexandria and put the packets on as many car windshields as possible. We didn't know how much we could do but we pledged to do as much as we could.
To make a long story short we hit the three local Walmart stores, the Kroger supermarket, Target, the mall and the local zoo. Much to our amazement, after six hours of rushing around town, the task that we feared could not be done had been accomplished. The 1500 units had been passed out.
In the end both Terri and I went through a full range of emotions during the process. The experience as a whole was way out of our comfort zone due to our shyness and fear of talking to people we don't know. It was very apparent that the devil was trying to use that against us at every opportunity. There were many times that we wanted to quit and there were just as many times that we wanted to shy away from people that we would come in contact with. It was by the power of God that we both resisted giving up and stepped outside our own phobias to actually talk to people about our church.
This of course just proves what we have read about in scripture, there is nothing to big for God to overcome.
If Terri and I had done what we had really wanted to do, which was honestly nothing, we would have missed out on the experience of doing what God wanted us to do and the blessings associated with it.
I have to share a bit of humorous insight that the Lord placed on my heart. When I was selfishly complaining about how I was feeling inconvenienced about having to give up my restful Saturday I was reminded on how Christ probably felt a little inconvenienced on the day He gave his life for my sins. Terri then joked that she was sure that He wanted to wake up that day, have a hearty breakfast, travel from Jerusalem to a nearby town, have a good talk with the disciples, perform a miracle or two, spend a relaxing evening having His feet washed while sharing the good news with a family who invited them in in for the night.
If Jesus could give up His life for me, I could at least give up my Saturday to serve Him.
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