I am not asking you to trust me. In fact, there are many reasons why you shouldn't. I can be selfish. Often. Greatly and completely focused on myself and what I want or think I need. I can be forgetful or thoughtless; characteristics you don't need in a friend who you are really counting on. I can be impatient and lose my temper at the most ridiculous moments or issues.
So, why do I share these things and what God is doing in my life if you shouldn't trust me?
Do you know what your gifts are; how God uses you best? What are you passionate about? I, for one, am passionate about you. I have spent a lot of time lately meditating on the ideal of how God desires to use us all to His glory and purpose. I do not have the spiritual gift of prophecy (which my basic understanding is to lead and instruct in the Word of God, including mysteries difficult to comprehend). That is not because I am not smart or do not study the Word of God. It is simply not my spiritual gift. My predominant one is Encouragement. It is what comes naturally to me and one in which I grow closer to my Great Love the more I follow His leading in that area.
My passion is that everyone I know may come not only to hear that they indeed ARE God's favorite, but that they come to truly believe it as I do. There are lost and broken people in the world...all around us. At the grocery. At work. They teach our children. They pass by us at the mall. They pull out in front of us in traffic. Oh, that we could all learn to look into the eyes of the crowning glory of God's creation and see them as He does. With tenderness, compassion, desperate love. And Grace.
And those of us who claim His name - WE are the ones He has chosen to show His love to those who have not yet made that choice. Am I doing that? You see, I know and remember well what it feels like to be at the bottom. I vividly, though reluctantly, recall those moments when I realized how easy it could be to make the choice not to go down this path with my Father. And I more fondly remember those precious moments that He picked me up and held me like a child; wiped my tears along with His own; whispered His love into my heart and breathed new life into my weary, broken soul. I do. I really do.
So I am truly passionate about wanting others to see. To know. To feel. To taste. To grasp. To hold on for dear life to that knowledge that God loves. He does.
So, I follow this with two thoughts:
1 - What happens when I fall short? When I act ugly; lose my temper; forget you; focus on me? Does that negate the Love of our Creator?
2 - Does this in any way make less of the gifts of others that may not be the same as what God has laid on my heart?
Don't trust me. Don't put your faith in me.
Don't trust yourself. Don't put your faith in you.
Don't trust others. Don't put your faith in them.
One. Only One deserves our trust; our Faith; our Confidence; our Focus.
That being said, do we trust what God is doing in the lives of others? I ask this question because I am passionate about my gift. I am passionate about encouraging others as much as I can; not with empty words and flattery. But with the word of God and His love and compassion that I can only share with others because of His OUTPOURING of it into my life. It is easy for me, then, to look at my friend whose gift may be to prophecy - to instruct and lead in the word - with either disapproval or envy. How many times do we say to ourselves, "I wish I were as eloquent at speaking as ... I wish I could teach with the wisdom that ... I wish I had the time to serve like ... " ? We are not to judge - or compare - spiritual gifts. God created them to use all together for one purpose only - to point others to Him. So, if I become proud of myself and the gift God has given me - or if I become envious because my desire is for the gift of another - once AGAIN my focus is on me.
So, whether the thorn in my side is pride - or envy - my trust simply must lie in God and God alone. Do I trust what He is doing in the life of another? Do I trust His grand design and plan and the way He uses individuals in it? Do I trust that what He has led me to do is what He needs me to do? Do I trust that the words or passion of another is His plan for them? Do I trust HIM?
I am broken. And flawed. Weary, shattered and torn. But God still chooses to move in me. Why? You know the answer.
Don't trust me - trust Him. Trust that He is still working and moving and working. In YOU. In ME. In the lives of those around you.
I have Great Expectations - not of myself and not of you. But of my Great Love and all that He will proceed to do in this coming year.
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