At the Gathering this week, God spoke through a friend into my life. This is pretty much the norm.
He said, basically, that God is not desirous of what we are able to do for Him. While our talents, abilities, and areas of expertise are definitely valid to be useful, God is not looking for us to be figuring out all the great things we can do with those talents. He wants us to be faithful in being useful where we are. This was ice water in my spiritual face.
I have been trying to discern God's will for me among the torrent of various options and possibilities available as I settle back in at home. I have been seeking God's face in this, and looking for interesting or cool possibilities. But I don't think God necessarily wants me to look for the neat ministry I was thinking I might be equipped to pull off. He wants me available to do what he wants.
So I put the ideas I have been mulling over off to the side, and I looked for ways that I could be selflessly serving the needs that God was trying to fill. I found the opportunity before I totally realized I was looking. So God gave me the opportunity to serve Him in a more lowly, less skill/talent oriented fashion, and it was a great blessing. To do a more lowly job is a great way to truly experience God's will.
It is amazing however, how easily we can do something humbling with a prideful spirit. How does it work out that we can serve God in a hole somewhere and then brag about how humbling it was? So perhaps we find ourselves in one of three positions.
In the first position, we are unwilling to do what God would have us or blind to what the is. We do nothing of true benefit in this category.
In the second, we see and follow through with the service of God, and it is good for us and molds us, but we see it at face value, a work and stretch that grew us.
But the third, this is the greatest, to live in simple love relationship with God in a manner that yearns to be only working in the hole on the other side of the world. A love relationship so real that serving God needs no fruit whatsoever, because its just for Him, and His satisfaction is the only fruit we would see anyway.
A friend told me a story recently about a man going to heaven and coming back. I think we have a common feeling sometimes about this type of Lazurus story. We wonder, how could this person who has seen the presence of God stand to come back to earth once more. But when this man was asked about this, his response was that to be so overwhelmed with adoration for God only loans itself to be unwavering in doing whatever He could possibly ask of us.
I once had one of the most worshipful experiences of my life standing at the end of a steel press in a factory, praise God for his glory! I don't see this as something to brag about, but something I desire. I want to be contented to work in a deep hole without the knowledge of any other being aside from the Lord. I want that love with Him to break all fleshly desires for anything else!