About a month ago, I prayed for God to protect my heart, to take away my useless dragon scales I try so hard to pull back around me, to take my controlling hands away from my life, and to bring me to full recognition of His control (all clauses of the same prayer). Since then, God has brought a bunch of issues up in a roiling boil.
A few weeks ago, it was the election. How much trust was I putting in laws written on paper by humans instead of laws written on hearts by God? How much confidence was I putting in God's sovereignty over all things? How hard was I willing to fight for harmony with fellow citizens of a kingdom far greater than any on earth?
Post-election, there's the youth group banquet. This has been "my" thing for about five or six years and it has been my major theatrical outlet. This year, somebody else not only came up with the main idea but wants to be involved in its execution. Also, two people sometimes more popular and almost entirely always more laid back and thus possibly more inherently likable than I am are competing for the leader spotlight.
This afternoon, I pondered how tightly my identity had gotten wrapped up in this annual church youth group event, how much prouder I was of it than I thought, how much I liked basking in the affection of any youth group kids willing to offer it, how supplanted I felt. I was still thinking about this when I got to church tonight...and found the guest pastor had changed his sermon from "Godly Grief" to "Godly Boasting."
He said boasting in the Lord means...
...we praise God for whatever He does through us.
...we don't boast based on comparison with others.
...we don't exaggerate our strengths.
...we don't take credit for what we didn't accomplish.
...we value the Lord's opinion above any others.
God is the only one worth impressing, he said. God is the only one who gives you worth, he said. We can have peace with ourselves through peace with God...it will never come from the adulation of others.
Again with the timing of God.
This banquet is not (should not be) about how awesome Suzanne is. Or how awesome the other leaders are. Or the performers, or the cooks, or whoever. We're doing this to raise funds for ministry, not fuel our egos.
Also, thinking that people only have room in their hearts for one person, and that if they care about somebody else they can't also care about me, is pretty shallow. Especially considering I've been increasingly experiencing the reverse: that the more deeply my love is based on God's love for me, the more people I can love deeply.
And what if some focus is being taken off this creative outlet because it's time for me to stretch my creative self in other ways?
I don't know what else the Holy Spirit is going to be doing in my life this year, but what I do know is this: it's going to be something amazing.
1 comment:
Praise God for His work in us, and the ways He causes us to trust in Him more deeply! What you wrote about "thinking that people only have room in their hearts for one person" hit exactly what I've been struggling with lately. We should be friends or something. I'll be praying that we learn more and more that our boasting is in the Lord.
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