Does that ever happen to you? You get started on one thing and another gets your attention. You put this down to work on that and the other gets your attention. Welcome to my world... the world of Attention Deficit Disorder!
Or maybe it's more complicated than that. Maybe you set out to do something for the Kingdom... some ministry task... and decided you just weren't worthy of such a task. Your conscience just wouldn't allow you to go through with it. So it remained half-done.
That's probably a more apt description of why it has taken me over six months to complete a blog. Sometimes I look around me and begin to feel I'm failing my God and Savior. I feel like I am unworthy and a hypocrite. When I find myself in this place I find myself doing nothing. It's not that doing nothing makes me feel any better. It's just that, at the time, it seems to not make me feel worse about my testimony. The unfortunate thing is this feeling eventually tends to build on itself. So I have to conclude that I am feeling worse about my testimony and I am beginning to withdraw into my own little pity party.
But there are times, like this past Sunday evening, that can really bring me out of that place. At bedtime Sunday evening Lacey gave her heart to Jesus! She has been talking about being saved for quite awhile now. However, the way she talks about it is so matter-of-fact that it has kept us from making a big deal of it.
Lacey is quite a bit different from her sisters. Whereas they are a bit reserved and don't volunteer much information, Lacey is outgoing, outspoken and whatever is on her mind is coming out her mouth! Lacey is extremely sensitive to the world around her in many ways (much like I was at her age). She can't stand loud noises, she can't handle any sort of intense situations... whether in real life or in a movie. She has yet to watch a Star Wars movie because the intense music makes her extremely uncomfortable. That said, she is also extremely sensitive to (and responsive to) the needs of those around her.
Along with all this sensitivity comes a very expressive personality. Lacey can communicate her feelings better than any six-year-old I've ever seen. She is so expressive your first inclination is to pass it off as a game. But when she came to us Sunday evening to tell us she wanted to be saved we decided we needed to follow up on it this time. I got my phone out and opened up my Bible app. I pulled up a few scriptures and Lacey read them to me. I then asked her to tell me what they meant. She answered all my questions fully and quickly. When she understood what she needed to do she prayed, told God she was a sinner, told Him she wanted to turn away from her sin and turn to Him. She said she knew Jesus was His son and that He died for her sins and she asked Him to save her. It was that simple!
So it's at times like these when I realize first of all that I am making a difference. I also realize I had a responsibility to be a witness because someone was watching me and that someone was my own daughter! She learned about Jesus in part because of me and she made the decision to follow Him in part because of me. What if I had given up because I felt so unworthy to be a witness and had gone my own way? Would she have made that decision?
Finally, we have been studying the Holy Spirit in our Sunday School series. Part of our study was when Jesus promised to send a "comforter". He said that this advocate would be with us forever... that He would guide us to all truth and He would declare the words of Christ to us!
So, if we have such a Spirit within us, why should we be discouraged? Jesus knew we would struggle with our sin and our inadequacy and he sent his own Spirit to dwell in us and to glorify God through us. In fact, Jesus wants us to rely completely on the guidance of His Holy Spirit and not on our own guidance (Prov 3:5,6). That's where we get tripped up isn't it? We decide we aren't worthy and forget that we aren't supposed to do it! We're supposed to let God do it through us!
Romans 5:20b - "...but where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly"
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| 30 Life Principles by Charles Stanley |