Part II
In the last couple of years God has called me to a couple of new assignments which I truly never saw coming, and which have pushed me out of my comfort zones, my well-known ruts, to take on some new challenges. The first one is to open a residential home for women who have suffered sexual exploitation, to help them heal and come to know Jesus and enable them to have a normal, fruitful life. The second one was to bring a man into my life and go from being single for over 40 years to being married.
Here’s the thing: I’m not qualified for either of these assignments. I have never been involved with a home for sexually exploited women. I’ve never experienced anything like that; I’ve lived a pretty sheltered life. I do not have the education or experience that would qualify me to be the Executive Director of this home which we call Naomi’s House. I am in over my head.
Furthermore, I am not good wife material. I am independent; I work crazy hours; I don’t eat three meals a day; I make financial decisions without checking with anyone else; there is no extra closet space in my house—I use it all; I have scheduled my time to suit myself for over 40 years, and I’m not good at giving up control of my daily schedule. This is not good if you want to be a good wife.
But here I am, taking on two new assignments that take me totally out of my comfort zone and force me to courageously trust God in new ways. What I want to do is simply share some things I’m learning as I’m taking on these new assignments, and challenge you to step out on faith to whatever new assignment God has for you.
Let me begin by reminding you of the truth found in Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
This is your life mission statement in a sentence, if you have decided to follow Jesus Christ. You belong to God who created you, and he has specific good works for you to do, all planned in advance, and your job is to know what those good works are and then do them.
Here are some things I’ve learned and am learning along the way to doing the good works God has for me to do:
- God often gives us assignments that are outside of our gifting and take us out of our comfort zone.
I believe—I know—that to do the good works which were ordained in advance for you to do, you’re going to be out on a limb, in territory that is not only new, but territory that doesn’t necessarily fit.
Let me give you one personal example: My skills as a manager of people are not naturally good. Furthermore, I don’t enjoy the responsibility that comes with having people report to me. This is neither in my wheelhouse nor is it in my heart to do. Give me a choice, I will not be a people manager.
The facts are, to do the good works God has called me to do, I’ve had to manage people in one capacity or another for 32 years. It came with the God-given job. So, what do you do when you have to do something outside your gifting? You need help! I wish I had understood this many years ago, because I could have avoided many hiring mistakes and management mistakes. I just bumbled along, figuring that somehow I could do it, but knowing that I wasn’t doing it very well.
So, I have enlisted the help of people who are very good at this—people who have done it and who can teach me things I need to know. What a difference that has made. I have a couple of go-to people now who I call for help and advice when I’m facing a people issue that is delicate or baffling. Amazing how they can see things I can’t see.
So, I just want you to know that the work God calls you to do will have parts that you aren’t particularly good at, and parts you don’t enjoy. Don’t let that keep you from the good works God has for you to do. Seek help. Ask for advice. Learn, change, grow, improve. But don’t use it as an excuse for not accepting a new assignment that God has for you.
- God is always preparing us for what is ahead, even when we don’t realize it.
Think of King David. Do you think that while he was tending sheep he ever thought that God had chosen him to be King of Israel? Not once, I’m sure. But that’s where he became an expert with a slingshot; that’s where he wrote music and words and learned to play an instrument. That’s where he had time to consider Nature and God and think deeply. All of which God used mightily in his life and in the many centuries since then. What would we do without the Psalms that David wrote? How often do they sustain and encourage us, as he speaks the words of our heart?
I dare say if you look back on your own history, whatever you’ve learned, whatever you’ve experienced, whatever hardships or difficulties you’ve gone through, they have prepared you for something God is doing or is going to do with you. You may have never chosen that kind of education or preparation, but God knows how to turn even what others meant for evil into good for us.
- You’ll always feel inadequate, because the truth is, you’ll always be inadequate.
Let me remind you of what Paul wrote to the Corinthians:
But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him (1 Cor. 1:27–29).
God chooses inadequate people—it’s on purpose that he is asking you to do something you feel unqualified to do. That should not come as a surprise—you feel inadequate because you are. Don’t let that keep you from doing the good works God has prepared for you to do.
- Often God’s will is for us to decide.
Making decisions is one way we grow and learn. So, there will be times when you simply will not have any great emotional confirmation or direction, but you will be faced with a decision that you must make, based on your knowledge of Scripture and the wisdom that God promises to give us.
That means, of course, that you are taking a risk—the risk that you could make the wrong decision. You could absolutely fall on your face. If you haven’t fallen on your face, made some bad decisions, regretted some things you’ve done, then my guess is, you haven’t done much!
Many times when we want God to give us some special confirmation, some emotional reassurance, we are actually saying that we want to walk by sight not by faith! It could be that God is putting a decision in front of you and waiting for you to decide, based on biblical principles, perhaps godly input from people you trust, but showing God you’re willing to walk by faith and not by sight.
- There is no “little” with God.
We keep thinking that God measures people and gifts and accomplishments like we do—by size, by quantity, by big versus small. But that is never true of God.
Have you, like the man in the parable of the talents who had only one talent, been disparaging the importance of your “one talent,” your gift, your ability, your opportunities? Have you been thinking that God is not involved in your “little” life?
Can I remind you of the boy with the small lunch? Jesus multiplied it more than he could have ever dreamed. What about the widow who gave her last penny? Not small to Jesus. Jesus said she gave more than the others. And those two people have been memorialized in Scripture for centuries.
You see, Jesus just measures differently than we do. If your excuse has been that you don’t have much to offer to the Lord, it simply won’t hold water. Jesus measures what you do with what you’ve been given—where you started and where you ended up—and he never compares you to anyone else.
Mother Teresa used to advise, “Don’t try to do great things for God. Do small things with great love.” That is really the right attitude, isn’t it? Sometimes we want to do great things for the wrong reasons—to promote ourselves, to draw attention to what we’ve done. But God looks at our motivation—why do we do what we do? Doing small things with great love is the way Jesus operated. He touched individual lives of ordinary people—people who needed a healing touch of some kind or other, and out of compassion and love, he took time to reach out and touch some very unimposing, unimportant people. I think of the woman who had a blood issue for years and she was just trying to touch Jesus’ garment. He blessed her and healed her immediately—he did a small thing with great love. There are so many examples of this in the Bible.
Well, I hope these thoughts have been helpful to you. I truly want to urge you to take the next step and see where God may be leading you. If there is an opportunity for you to step out of your boat and you’ve been hesitating out of fear or feeling inadequate, please just take the next step and see where it leads. It’s not rocket science here, as they say. It’s a simple matter of obeying the call of God on your life, no matter how small it may appear to you.