Lately
I’ve noticed that my reading and devotions have been focusing on my “calling”, but
thinking about that often makes me nervous.
It gives me performance anxiety, because I’ve been given an assignment,
but what if I fail? I believe God wants
me to write, but I’m not sure if I have the ability to consistently glorify him,
or be a good witness through my words.
Well,
I need not wonder any more. The fact is,
I don’t have the ability. That’s one of the freeing things about being
54 years old. I’ve had most of my life
to try as hard as I can to accomplish what I felt was important, and have
become painfully aware of my limitations.
I
not only fear that I will fail at my most important responsibilities, I fear making
a fool of myself publicly by publishing what I write and having people chuckle
to themselves about this newbie who should have revised a few more times, or
roll their eyes at my silly ideas about life.
It
occurred to me while I was listening to a sermon how much of a risk Noah and
Moses took by obeying God’s call on their lives. They could have made such fools of themselves
if they’d misunderstood God. And if the
embarrassment wasn’t bad enough, they could have even gotten themselves thrown
in jail or killed. It took a lot of
faith to do what they did.
Or,
I should say, it took a lot of faith in
God to obey what he told them to do.
That’s different from having faith in themselves.
Lately,
I am realizing that it is God’s responsibility to make something of my
efforts. He is the one that had the
brilliant idea of working through humans to love and serve mankind, instead of
taking the safe route of just doing it himself through supernatural methods
(which would have taken a lot of pressure off of us!). But I believe that this plan of his is
perfect, because he is the one who thought of it.
Notice
that in Acts 1:8 Jesus does NOT say, “After you ask for the Holy Spirit, you’ve
got to try your hardest to demonstrate my power, and hopefully you won’t be too
chicken to be my witnesses in your neighbourhood or overseas.” (This is actually how I’ve been reading it
for the past thirty years.)
No,
he says, “You WILL RECEIVE power…and you WILL BE my witnesses.” As in, “It’s going to be amazing what God’s
power will do through you. I can hardly
wait!”
In
Exodus 31, when God chose (called!) Bezalel to take responsibility for the
designs of the Tent of Meeting and its furnishings, he “filled him with the
Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, knowledge and craftsmanship” so
that he could make beautiful things. God
puts his Spirit in us, too, giving us writing ability, intelligence, knowledge
and craftsmanship to make beautiful words.
I
believe that this is what makes our calling sure: our awareness of God’s power
and our willingness for him to use us for his own purposes.
Posted
by Ramona
That is very true. We do not want to fail. When I wrote my first book, I wanted to do it in third person. It looked safe. Then someone reminded me of David and how vulnerable he was when he wrote the Psalms.
ReplyDeleteI wrote in first person and took the challenge.
The Lord had given me the urge to write on that subject, so I better obey. I am glad that I did.
You certainly put a finger on something, Ramona! Wow.... what a revelation! And how freeing it is!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for sharing... and for your transparency. I feel some hitherto unidentified thing fall off my own shoulders.
You're right. Our job is to do what we're requested to do to our best ability. The rest is His responsiblity-when, where and how ,our work is used.
ReplyDeleteI do blog weekly on my personal blog Precious Moments. I don't send it to anyone, so I don't receive any comments. But I know it's viewed by many online, even internationally. I believe as long as we do our work in obedience, God will take care of the rest for His glory.
Hi Ramona,
ReplyDeleteIt's so motivating to know that we WILL receive power and craftsmanship too, to carry out God's designs. Wow. God's Word is so relevant to our writerly lives!
Pam M.
Ramona, what you say resonates with me! Well said!
ReplyDeleteAll of these comments put together are a lovely little sermon, and very affirming--most appreciated!
ReplyDeletePraise the Lord! Girl is preachin' fine now. I do wish I had me a Hammond organ up in here.
ReplyDeleteYes, I mean it.
No, I'm a white man.