I recently spent two days at the Ohio Annual Social Work conference. This year the conference focused on how social workers can become agents of change. It was cool to think about how the 500+ people in the room with me all chose professions where they would be helping people, systems, and society move towards positive change. This made me think about how God is that agent of change in each of our lives.
While in this season of fundraising, I know God is using it to change and prepare me for things I will face while in South Africa. I want to share three ways God has been using my life circumstances to change me.
- Since starting my journey of fundraising, I have been through some personal battles. For the past couple years of my life I have been depending on earthly people more than God. Since none of those people are coming to South Africa with me, I think God knew I needed to learn how to depend on him alone. He did this by removing some of the closest people in my life. He has to be my #1 if I want to survive in South Africa. This change has caused me a lot of pain. One thing that I held on to during this hard time was that God is good. Difficult times demand decisions of faith. Instead of getting angry at God that this was happening to me, I knew that I needed to lean on him more. While using God as my help during this season of growth, my relationship with him has flourished. This change in my life might have surprised me, but I know it did not come as a surprise to God. He can and will use this pain for his greater purpose.
- I am not much of a daredevil. The majority of things I attempt to do I know I will be able to accomplish. I know that God gave me all of my skills and strength, but I still told myself that I could do these things on my own. Oh, how naive I was! Fundraising keeps teaching me how to fully depend on God, not only in my personal relationships, but with skill based projects too. I learned that God is asking me to do everything he is asking me to do and he will take care of filling in the rest. Relying on him to “fill in the rest” can still scare me some days, but this is a good reminder of my lack of faith and how my faith needs to grow. During my highs and lows I have been assured that God is good and he will never leave me.
- I am a very prompt person. I hate being late, which in turns means I am normally early everywhere I go. God has been changing my heart on this issue. I applied to GoCorps in the fall of 2016. I was assigned to my first placement a few months later, which meant I would leave for Africa October of 2017. The timing was perfect: finish grad school, spend the summer fundraising, and then leave. When my second placement fell through, I knew I was going to miss the deadline to leave in October and would be forced to wait another 3 months. Didn’t God know that this was not part of my timeline? God helped me see that it wasn’t the end of the world to change my timeline and he showed me again that his time line is always better than mine. I know I would rather sit idle with God, then move forward without him.
“Rather than ask God to change your circumstances, ask him to use your circumstances to change you. Life is a required course. Might as well do your best to pass it.” ― Max Lucado, You'll Get Through This: Hope and Help for Your Turbulent Times