Over the past week I have been challenged again to just embrace the call that God has put on my life. A wise friend said "You have everything you need! You are gifted and you have a heart after God. Just submit yourself to your calling and do a fantastic job!" It is just so encouraging when people see potential in you and encourage it out of you. The hard part is knowing your weaknesses and still believing that whatever you're called to do is possible.
I've included a couple of pieces of scripture (from The Message) that I have found useful this weekend as I have approached the calling on my life as a worship leader and songwriter. This is pretty general and can be applied to any gifting/calling, but for the musicians and `worshippers` among us I just want to encourage you to go for it, go with who you are now. I have been rediscovering my uniqueness and individuality in God. It's a relief that I have no need to compare myself with anyone else. I will lead worship and write songs in a completely different way to anyone else but that is still acceptable and in fact pleasing to the One who put the gifting there in the first place.
It's fantastic that we have people in our lives who we can look up to and be challenged by but sometimes I think we are too willing to model ourselves on those people rather than become who we are called to be. I love watching others lead worship and picking up little tips but I still have to discover the unique way God has designed me to lead.
(Romans 4:19-21)
Abraham didn't focus on his own (weakness) and say, "It's hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child." Nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. He didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. .....But it's not just Abraham; it's also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.
(2 Corinthians 7-10)
Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn't get a big head, I was given the gift of a (weakness) to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan's angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. At first I didn't think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. ...then he told me.
"My grace is enough; it's all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness."
I quit focusing on the (weakness) and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ's strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer... I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.
2 comments:
Hi Claire, it's class to have you blogging! Your analysis and perspectives are much apreciated - especially on a topic which is saturated with hype and self-righteousness. Your blog is a welcome redress!
something wonderful...o that my worship could come from such humility...
"One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live for ever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender, solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange, unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun-which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark-blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone's eyes."
~ from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
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