What Grace is Given Me

I've had a paradigm shift. You know when you know you should know something, but understanding is just out of your grasp and you put every mental effort towards understanding it, but all you get is a headache? Yeah, it's been kinda like that for me in regards to viewing God as the One in charge. Oh, don't get me wrong: I know that He's in charge, but in a Sunday school answer sorta way. For a while now I've been realizing that I probably don't view God the way I should. I mean, the concept of "God" is pretty huge. I've known Him as my Friend for so many years, and can easily talk with Him as such. But something's always been missing in the area of treating Him with reverence and awe. The way I've viewed Him before was mostly just, yeah, You're there, and I talk with You pretty regularly, but I never really felt direct influence from Him. His love has been working subtly in my life these past 12 years, but it's been just that: subtle. I've never really been able to talk about the stuff I do as directly God working through me, and my self-absorbance has been nagging on me for the last few years. But last week during Plunge, I was given the most amazing gift: the recognition that God was working through me, and that it was not in my own strength, but only by His grace.

You see, for the previous three years I've led on Plunge, I've always felt my ineptitude at doing any sort of spiritual mentoring. I feel the expectancy from the kids and from the other leaders, and it sends me into a performance spin that ends up plummeting on the Friday nights-the most expected and intense time of worship and ministry. I usually end up sitting in the back of the room at the Rock International church, looking around at all the kids and wondering how in the world I'm supposed to speak into their lives when I'm either too exhausted or too wrapped up in my own spiritual need. Then the self-pity just gets worse when I see the other leaders going around and praying for my kids, and even more guilt is added onto the pile.

But this year, this year was different. Maybe it was the fact that I was one of the few older leaders who had experience in getting through the week, and I needed to step up. Maybe it was that I had a smaller family group and didn't feel so much pressure. It might have been some of those things, but all week long, I felt such grace from God to speak what was on His heart to those around me. It was like I was given new eyes to see what He was doing. I didn't feel any pressure, just relaxed and let Him lead me. All I did was watch what He was doing....if He was kneeling in front of one of the kids during ministry time, telling her how special she is to Him, I felt His heart moving in mine, and went up to her and said His words out loud. At one point, I saw Him whispering into a young man's ear that He is a gentleman-nothing more, just that. It took me a few minutes to ask, 'Lord, anything else? Really, that's it?' before I went up to the young man and told him just that, no more, no less. It was stretching, but so exhilerating!

I realized that my view on "Jesus working through me" needed to change. We get so wrapped up in our own importance that we think Jesus will come alongside what we're doing, when all along He's asking us to come alongside Him and what He's doing. When we do that, we are being His hands, feet, voice, hug, tears, laughter, smile, and cheers. And there is so much freedom in that, not only for the people we minister to, but for ourselves: freedom from the burden of trying to do it our own way, a burden we were never meant to carry in the first place.