“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:7

Over the  past couple of years, the Lord has lead me into situations where I just thought, ”I’ll do it wrong. My words won’t be good enough. I’ll make the wrong choice.” 

I have often thought that I just don’t have what it takes to really honor God well, and someone else could probably do whatever that thing is better than me. I’ve been in a public school classroom knowing the Lord wanted me to share the gospel with students, but unsure about what that would look like. I chaperoned student camp last July, and was terrified I was going to fail our students by not having the words they might need to hear from a leader. I joined the worship team and I’m still always terrified that the prompter is going to go out in the back and I won’t remember the words or I’ll knock something over during closing prayer. I want the Lord to use me, but that level of insecurity is my starting point with just about everything. 

But, God works on me every time. He shuts out the lies and shows me who I am in Christ and if He is in me, I will not fail. I am wrong, my words aren’t good, I will make the wrong choice… but God takes someone like me and does his work through me even when I think there’s no possible way that could happen.

I’ve taught at Preble Shawnee for the past 2.5 years. During my time there, I became bold in my faith because the Lord led me to other Christians in my workplace who strengthened and encouraged me. He opened the door for Aaron Buchanan to come alongside me, and establish an FCA group which gave us a platform to dive deeper into sharing the gospel with students. 

In February, I was offered my dream job seemingly out of no where. I was praying that the Lord would make it clear to me where He wanted me to go. Of course at the same time, we were going through Niemiah here at church and Stephen spoke about how the enemy will try to distract us from our mission. He gave many examples of what that could look like, and of course one of the distractions in that list was a job opportunity. It was that moment where it seems like the preacher is talking directly to you! By the way, I’ve figured out that when I like what I hear in the sermon, it’s clearly God speaking, but if I don’t like it, then that’s just Stephen. In all seriousness, it was just one of those times when you’re searching for the Lord’s voice and I was in agony about making the wrong decision.

Of course I decided to go ahead and over think the entire situation, but I’ll spare you the details. I wound up accepting the job and I love it, but I’m surrounded by co-workers with fancy degrees, widespread acceptance and even celebration of a multitude of worldly views, and a full embrace of the culture we are live in. I’m outnumbered, and I feel it, and the insecurities are flooding in. I wrote down a quote Stephen has shared, “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world”.  My prayer right now is, that I would have a heart to love and serve the people I’m around in the same what that Jesus would and that my hands would stay open for Him to give me what I need to make him known because he’s done it before and he will do it again and it won’t be because I’m good, but because he is. When Jesus was nailed to the cross, it freed me from needing to be qualified in any way and that fills me with gratitude and peace that can only come from Him.