What does God want from me, actually?
Try as I might to clothe this question with different, more theologically acceptable words, this is the essence of what I have wrestled with throughout the past 2 months. What does God want from me? He has called me to live and work overseas, He has provided the support and training for me to do that, but I am still in the States. Why? What did I do wrong? What have I failed to do? What does God want from me?
If it sounds like these questions are coming from a place of desperation, that’s spot on. But the reality is that it is these questions that keep me in that place of desperation and discouragement.
Being desperate itself isn’t bad. When I am desperate, I am pushed to my knees before the throne of God. But when I am desperate AND discouraged, worn out, and hopeless, that same desperation pushes me into a destructive cycle of trying to encourage, recharge, and motivate myself. In reality, I have no power to remove myself from desperation. By nature, I am desperate, I need the help of another. And this is why I rejoice in the One who does save and sustain me.
I have no need to be ashamed of my desperation, my perpetual state of needing the One who is greater than I to inform and lead my life – this is human nature. But when I try to address my desperation in my own power, I do have need to repent because I allowed my desperation to push me to a place of thinking that I am god. This is never an explicit statement, but it does underly my thoughts and actions when I am trying to find my own solutions to my desperation.
And this brings me back to my questions – they assume that I am the center of my situation. That because of me the process of getting to Spain is taking so long. That because of what I do that process will speed up or slow down.
Now we both know that this is true to some extent – if I don’t complete the requirements then the process will not progress or ever be complete – but the aspects of my circumstance that are out of my control are exactly that, OUT OF MY CONTROL. And this is how it should be because I am not God!
If I profess to believe in Jesus Christ, all that He taught and all that is taught in the Bible, then I have chosen to accept that my role in life is to not know everything. I have accepted that I am a created being, dearly loved and intentionally made and purposed, but created to be obedient and a follower. To live in submission, trust, and dependence.
So why do I find myself again and again in this place of trying to call the shots and thinking that everything in life hinges on me? Because, I believe, one of the greatest lies the enemy speaks is that we are the most important factor in our own lives and thereby he dethrones God from His rightful place and distances us from Him through our own self elevation.
Even as a born-again believer who has been called to be a missionary, I have to actively battle against this lie and the tendency to obsess over myself. The weapon I am finding is simple, the gospel.
In the gospel I find the only One who can and who does save me. Who redeems me and gives me life where my desperation turns to dependence. I am no longer desperate because I have all that I need in Christ and so I get to become dependent upon Him each day.
When I return to the gospel, I realize that the Lord didn’t save me because He wants something from me. This is not a transaction, where I get salvation and provision and the Lord gets X number of years of my service and work. The gospel declares that I have been redeemed because the Lord made me and loves me and wants to be with me. Where do I get an expectation of performance out of that? I have warped the outflow of praise and service that manifests from my love for the Lord into an expectation I imagine He has of me. The reality is that He has redeemed me to be His, and then He invites me into a rich life of work and service that He has crafted for me.
A few weeks ago, I thought about this in the context of slaves vs. children as Paul discusses in his letter to the Galatians.
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying “Abba, Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. Galatians 4:4-7
As a child I am loved and provided for simply on the basis of my childhood, of who my father is. Children are invited to spend time with and work with their fathers, and sons especially are invited to take up their father’s trade. But the relationship between father and child is not dependent on that work. As a slave, work is expected in order to maintain relationship. But believers have been made children and heirs, not slaves. This is the position I have. And my Father invites me to take up His trade! To see His kingdom grow and multiply.
When I remember that this is reality, that I am a child, first asked to be with the Lord and then asked to work with Him, I can live with freedom and joy in this time of waiting. I do not need to blame myself and search for some grievance committed and ways to right it in order to get to the field.
I get to trust that my Father (who is not only my Father but the sovereign God of the universe who cares for ALL PEOPLE) has intentionally set each day before me.
I can trust that He knows what is best for His work that I am simply invited into.
I can let Him call the shots and be as faithful and obedient as possible with what is before me each day.
What is it that the Lord asks of me? To do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with my God.
Praise be to the One who is in control.