…then God does something…
Oh crap! I have thought and said those 2 words to myself on a number of occasions. Here’s how it usually works for me. I get really involved in something. I love throwing myself into it. I see needs. In practically everything I see potential. I start dreaming. I start thinking. I start talking. I get the contract. I get what I asked for but never usually anticipate all the “other stuff” that comes with it. You know the fine print at the bottom of a 13 page contract that you skim over because you want the car.
Once, while working a full time job at a very established corporate company I decided to take on the position of a volunteer youth pastor for a church. Note, I was working my way up in the corporate company and their was probably a valid argument to discourage me from focusing on anything else other than my career. Valid as that argument may have been I didn’t heed it. I chose to focus on my career and on a group of inner city kids because I saw a need. I saw a ton of potential and I felt I could make a difference. Little did I know the deeper I got the more I realized that I may have been in a little over my head. I labored for 7 years and in the end walked away exhausted but full of joy. God did a ton. Scholarships, college degrees, spiritual maturity, healed relationships, victory over addictions, excitement, purpose, love and community all visible in that group.
Perhaps conventional wisdom would tell me that I got lucky. I was over excited and under prepared for the task that I wanted to take on. I was naive and only by chance did I not destroy or perpetuate any negative cycles for these kids and as a result I should not do something like that again.
I have always had a hard time sitting on the bench in a game where anyone willing can have some game time it’s probably why I find myself in similar scenarios far too often.
“In almost every endeavor I go after, there is always a moment when I have tremendous regret. It’s always that moment when I’ve gone too far to turn back, and there’s absolutely no assurance of success. I start cursing my holy discontentment, my entrepreneurial nature, and I kick myself for being naive, calling it faith. And then God does something amazing, and I go do it all over again.”
