Some facts about yesterday:
- It was New Year’s Day.
- It was Sunday.
- I also had my rotation in KCC, our church’s children’s ministry.
Hence lies the problem.
I love my church. It has been such a haven for me. A place of peace. A place of worship. A place of learning & growing. A safe community.
What was the problem?
We only had one service yesterday.
That was the problem. So to do my rotation with the kids meant there would be no attending a service. No worship (I LOVE the worship music at our church!). There would be no teaching (I LOVE the teaching/preaching at our church). There would only be the kids & I LOVE them too, for sure.
But what about “me”?
See the problem?
“What about my hearing from God on the first day of the year”
“What? – I am only going to church to be in KCC?”
It wasn’t until I went to bed – shutting off the lights in the family room – that God confronted that attitude in me. He even was so gracious as to identify it for me – selfishness. I gave Him a few more minutes & He called it something else – sin.
Yes, God is good all the time 🙂
I truly love serving in the children’s ministry. I love the kids. Being in there should not have been difficult for me. Yet, selfishness raised its ugly head in me yesterday (on a Sunday, The Lord’s Day, no less).
Know what I learned?
- God will deal with what is ugly in us. And if we are maintaining our walk with Him, He loses no time in addressing it. He did not even let the sun go down on this one, so to speak.
- Ministry is sacrifice. If we truly are serving, it is going to cost us something.
- Ministry is hard, inconvenient at times. God does not time things so that it works out with our schedules or plans.
That is just the way it is. It is His Church & He does things His way. And in the end, it works.
It works. It truly does.
I so enjoyed the kids. How they talked & played & laughed & engaged me. I could have spent more time with them. I left church feeling so full from having been with them.
Now here is the funny part. I did hear from God yesterday. Just before shutting the lights off in the family room (I had to watch the new House Hunters Marathon!!!), I realized that I had not yet looked at the verse on my new calendar. In looking at it, I was stunned as it was the very verse that I had read in my devotional. Now if that was not enough, a dear friend had also emailed the verse to me yesterday. And now before going to bed, there it was on my calendar. How like God to repeat His thought to me 3X!!!
Yes, it is a new year. I am ready for God to do a new thing. Perhaps He is already begun in working in me a new heart. May He do what He must so that He can also make that way in the wilderness & bring rivers in the desert. He is so faithful.
