Content in Him
The Lord has been teaching me much lately in the area of contentment, being content in Him. I don’t consider myself what some people call “a control freak”, but then I don’t like to be out of control either, rather I like things to be organized, to have things organized in a way that I can find them quickly. Or in life, I like to have a plan, to know what is going to happen ahead of time so that I can be prepared (I was after all, a Girl Scout, and our motto was “be prepared” J ).
This desire to have life situations orderly has transferred over into my walk with the Lord through the gift of administration. When I had administrative assistant jobs in the states, I excelled in my jobs to the utmost, with every detail about my job organized in such a fashion that I could locate anything within minutes of being asked. Once I started working in Christian organizations, I had to be careful to not “administrate the Holy Spirit” out of the ministry. Oh sure, it is great to have the gift of administration, and a blessing from the Lord, but I have had to learn on more than one occasion to “let go and let God” as it seemed that I had the whole situation clenched (administrated) tightly in my fists. Each year as I have grown more in the Lord, the fist has opened and more of my life and ministry has opened up to the Lord, trusting in Him for all things rather than in myself and how I can administrate or control the situation. This year it seems as if the Lord wants to show me more of how I can truly trust in Him for all situations.
As I transferred from focusing on being coordinator/director of Healing Hearts Ministries Ukraine, to broadening my ministries, allowing the Lord to develop my gifts into other areas, the change in ministry and life was hard for the “orderly” part of me, as it all came about rather suddenly. I had become comfortable in the ministry the Lord had given me, but even with that comfortableness I had a nagging sense in the back of my mind, the last year or so, that a change in ministry/life was going to come about. Even though the last year or so the Lord had been trying to prepare me for this change with that “nagging sense” I didn’t really pay attention as I wasn’t sure what kind of change would come about, or when it would come about. And I felt confident that the Lord would give me plenty of notice. After all, He knows that I like to know “the plan” ahead of time. So when the change came, it took me quite by surprise, and for me it felt “drastic”. When I began to understand what was happening in my ministry/life, the feeling I got was as if my boss one day came up to me and said, “sorry, you are being laid off, and it has nothing to do with hierarchy, (who was hired when) but we feel that it is time to turn your job over to someone else” or put another way, I felt as if my favorite blanket had suddenly been taken away from me without the “weaning” process, just snatched away without any prior notice or warning. Not only had I lost my security, my comfortableness, but my life seemed to be at that moment, out of control. I knew at that moment that I was going to have to trust in Him in a greater sense for everything from now on. Instead of ministering in the comfortable manner of which I had grown accustomed, I was going to need to lean on Him in a manner that I had never have before. I also began to understand that I did not have any control over my life or the ministry that He had given me, but He was the one in charge, (He knew and knows the plan) always and at all times, even in surprise changes. Nothing is a surprise to the Lord.
“It was only when my routine life was yanked from under me, and when I understood I didn’t have an iota of control over any of it, that I realized I’d never been in charge in the first place. It was only then that I learned I could live with my loss.“* My “loss” had nothing to do with the change in ministry but everything to do with having lost a part of my deep intimate relationship with the Lord. I was so busy administrating and serving out of my comfortableness that I didn’t realize that the Lord and I had lost the “fine tuning” of our relationship. I had lost some of the deepest most intimate part of our relationship, He hadn’t lost me. He was always there, waiting for me to come back to Him not as we were in that comfortable “yea, things are going great Lord” type of life, but in a deeper moremore of a “Lord, I need you here to show me the way, to minister with me Lord, to pour yourself more and more into me so that I can truly be your vessel, your drink offering.” The time had come for me to stop holding onto the reigns, to stop trying to make sense of ministry and life on my own. This was not my job; it never was and never should or will be. This life, this ministry, whichever ministry I am doing, is His to make, (He was the one who designed it after all, not me) form and well, be in control of. “I didn’t understand life. And yet I knew God had His hand in it all. Maybe someday I’d figure it out. But not today. Today was for celebrating dreams…broken, mended, made new. I planned to do just that.”* intimate relationship,
So now, I am in a new city (Poltava, Ukraine). I am celebrating new ministries, new friends/ministry partners, a new dwelling place, a new life, and new dreams. Where I am living is surrounded by trees and away from the rush of the center of town. Although I am on the other side of town from others in my ministry group, it doesn’t matter. The Lord has placed a peace in my heart about my new dwelling place from the minute I walked in the front door (something I have never had before with any other dwelling places) as He said this new place would be my refuge from the storms, a place where I could get alone and be with Him surrounded by His beauty. And I know that in this time of refuge, of rest, the Lord and I will have some great intimate times together, a renewing of our love and our life together. I am therefore content in the knowledge that I am in the center of His will. I don’t want to be like the Israelites wandering in the desert complaining of all that He has given me, but rather I want to rejoice in that He has given me this divine appointment, this place, this time of rest, a refuge, where I can just “be” and find my all in all in Him. I have come to realize once again (perhaps the hard way), that in life and ministry it is all of Him all the time. The result? The Lord and I can “re-tune, re-fine”, and have more of a deep intimate relationship, ministering together in a more complete manner. Then I can be prepared to be a vessel (a newly remodeled vessel) of God, one that is filled fully with Him, a drink offering ready to be poured out onto others who thirst. For me, that is enough. There is nothing more that I would want.
What about you? Are you content in this journey of life/ministry the Lord has given you? Have you given Him all of yourself so He can fill you with all of Himself? Are you a vessel poured out as a drink offering for Him? Is He enough for you? Think and pray about these things. And while you’re doing that, keep listening for the sound of Angel wings, you never know when you might hear them.
Content in Him
Vanessa~
(*Quotes taken from “With Love, Libby” by Roxanne Henke)
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