Living with Dis-ease

My friends will tell you that the past year, with its many transitions, has been difficult for me. Just about the time I think we're done transitioning, we move into another permutation of life. Sharon and I have had to decide how we were going to respond to the many changes. We could sit around and complain to whomever would listen, or we could embrace the changes and look for the grace of God and the lessons from God in the changes. While we have certainly done the former to some extent, I am pleased to say we have mostly done the latter. We have seen God do things in us and through us that would not have been part of our life if we had stayed where we were and failed to follow God into this new season.

Some of my friends have bemoaned my current situation where I am not preaching weekly. I share their dismay that God would ask me to enter this place of ministry where one of my primary gifts is not being exercised in its usual context. Yet in this place, God is doing things in me as I trust Him. Especially as I trust Him to know what He's doing with me. (In this case its mostly, I think, about reminding me that He is not overly impressed with my abilities, He's more impressed with my willingness to trust Him. He can find many who can preach. Fewer who are willing to trust Him.) He's giving me the privilege of serving Him in areas that stretch my abilities and my comfort zone. The outcome of this is that any good that results from what I do more clearly comes from God's strength and grace than my abilities and spiritual gifts. In other words, God gets more glory because I can't say, "Aw, shucks, it tweren't nothin'" because it really is something. Something that God is doing with me, but also beyond me as I press into Him. In my former ministry it was sometimes easy to slip into, "Here's what's going to happen, so I just need to do this." In this season it is more often, "What is God going to do in this situation?" I do what I am able, then God does what I could never do.

It's been difficult. It's been rewarding. It's been a wild ride. It reminds me of the season after I left a church I loved in Orange County more than 20 years ago. It was one of the hardest seasons in my life. But I wouldn't trade what I learned about God and what I learned about me for all the comfort Orange County (or the world) has to offer.