So this morning I wasn't super excited about going to church. I hadn't been in two weeks due to traveling... and prior to my trip I had a somewhat uncomfortable conversation with someone that made me question quite a bit about the church (not enough to make me consider leaving, but enough to make me wonder if I will ever really fit in). Anyway, I must have changed like 6 times while getting ready this morning... which for me is a sign that I already feel uncomfortable about something... but eventually just decided I needed to leave because I knew I had a friend who would be waiting for me at service (Note to anyone who struggles getting to church: have a friend meet you there and text you to that they are going to save you a seat. You're more likely to go if you know someone is waiting for you).
Anyway, once I got to church I was feeling a lot better about the whole thing. The worship in this church always draws me into God and reminds me that it's all about Him and not about me to begin with. Well, then we got to the sermon...and I have to say, while I wasn't really expecting anything spectacular to happen (which is maybe a shame on my part)... the words the pastor spoke were something that I have been needing to hear for years...although I think this the first time I was ready to hear them.
We've been talking about the life of Abraham the past few weeks and in this mornings sermon we covered the very familiar story of when Abraham goes to sacrifice his son Issac to God. Like I said yesterday, I grew up in church, so this is another one of those stories I have heard a million times over. In fact in the past four weeks of this sermon series, this passage has been used more than once (although I don't know how many times more to be exact). Anyway, I think because of the familiarity of the story, at first I wanted to kind of shut down and go on auto pilot while listening to the sermon...but something within me told me not to. In fact, I really felt like I needed to pay close attention... that there was something in the sermon I needed to hear and I didn't want to miss it.
So, I sat there listening to the sermon, mentally taking notes of all the pastor's key points...all of which seemed powerful and important, but weren't hitting the mark in my spirit so to speak. But then we got closer to the end of the sermon...to the part of the story when God calls out to Abraham to stop what he is about to do (aka...kill his son) and instead provides a lamb for the sacrifice, sparing Issac's life... the pastor shared how in the same situation, he might be tempted to think he got God wrong and that maybe this wasn't what God had called him to in the first spot since God had chosen to change the ending. Immediately my heart skipped a beat and flashes of conversations I have had over the past few years begin to cross my mind.
I listened on intently as the pastor continued by telling a story from his own life about a job he worked almost a year towards getting only to have the position given to someone else at the last moment. Through his story (and a connection back to Abraham and Issac) he showed how God is more concerned with the journey than the destination... that God is more focused on the state of our hearts than anything else, and he will do whatever is necessary to form our hearts into the position they need to be for Him to use us.
As the pastor spoke and I thought about the various conversations I have had over the past few years, I realized that maybe what I thought was a failure or not of God, actually was him setting my heart back to holiness. When I left for the missions field I had such great vision... but honestly, I think a lot of it was self-centered. Right from the start, things didn't go the way I expected, and by midpoint of my time in Ecuador I was working more from a place of trying to prove something than trying to win souls for Christ (something that is quite hard to admit). When everything fell apart and I came back home, I was crushed and thought for sure that I must have heard God wrong... and that instead of following His will, I must have been pushing my own agenda all along... and so maybe I never was suppose to be a missionary to begin with.
Now in the past six to nine months God has been doing a lot of work in my heart to help me see where He was in the midst of my time overseas. But today, it was like God helped me to see that my time there wasn't wasted time. Things certainly didn't go as I expected and certainly didn't turn out as I wanted, but if it had not been for that time... I wouldn't be who I am today... and I wouldn't be the Christian I am today. Yes, it's been hard...yes I struggled a lot over the past few years trying to come to terms with everything... but I've always held onto the belief that God is God... and I have never doubted that He is in control. My faith has been solidified in the midst of all the pain and sorrow of what could have been.
So maybe what I thought was suppose to turn into a lifetime of ministry on the missions field, was actually God setting my heart right once again and preparing me for something more, although maybe different from what I expected. I still don't know what it all was for... which I guess makes sense considering it was just this morning that I was first confronted by the idea that just because things didn't turn out the way I expected, doesn't mean that God didn't call me to it. But tonight I find comfort in knowing there was purpose in all of it... even if I haven't discovered exactly what that is yet. I know that God is up to something in my heart, it's one of those things that I know, but can't explain. And today's message was just the encouragement I needed to believe that God has never stopped working on me and never will. What a relief! And what a strange sense of excitement I find filling my heart now. I wonder what's in store next?
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