We have a habit of perceiving that God is late – probably because in our purview, everything is always approaching. So when it doesn’t, it must still be on the way; it’s just late.
When I was in college, I was part of a church-based, global campus ministry that, at the time, I believed God was using to keep me on the straight and narrow during a time of life when many youth group faithfuls found themselves exploring all the unholiness they’d avoided throughout high school. That was part of it, I’m sure, but what I didn’t know then was that it was all a set up for a future I never expected.
I spent Friday mornings (early, early, early mornings…) studying biblical foundations with a woman and leader in the church. Then I spent Friday nights babysitting her little girl while she and her husband had date night, believing this was a deposit into the very near future I would have as a young wife and mother who hired college girls to babysit for me.
(They paid me very fairly, for the record…this wasn’t one of those ministry arrangements you look back on and realize was actually discipleship abuse.)
We really have no idea what God is doing, so it’s best to just let Him do it. Stop trying to add human effort to divine orchestration.
I spent my Sunday mornings at the church, then my roommate and I headed back to our apartment, after a pit stop at the Taco Bell/Pizza Hut drive thru, and napped until it was time to get ready for the college service in downtown Nashville that evening where I would typically sing on the worship team.
Wednesday nights were spent in discipleship classes or midweek services at the church. All of this while maintaining a job and being a music major at a highly competitive university. College life was busy – too busy to get into trouble, but never too busy to dream. And I was deeply plugged into this ministry.
Until I wasn’t.
When it was time to graduate, all of my friends stayed in the area and God opened doors for them to continue with the ministry that had become our lives for the last four years. The door He opened for me? Cincinnati, OH… where there was no connection to the church or global ministry that had become home to me in those college years.
Until there was.
It will get dark sometimes. You will wonder if He’s heard you. You will feel isolated.
But isolation might not be such a bad thing.
Seven years after I moved to Cincinnati… seven years of trying to find a church home, and instead finding disappointment, I see a social media post from that same woman with whom I’d spent every Friday morning and night in college: “It’s official.. We’re moving to Cincinnati to plant a church!”
Wait… it gets better…
This woman and her husband were to be the associate pastors. But who would be the lead pastor?
Remember the college service I used to sing for on Sunday nights? The lead pastor would be the man who, unbeknownst to me at the time, was a key leader in that college ministry.
However, his significance to me as a college girl was the very thing that makes him easy to follow as a lead pastor: he serves in a way that provides security. Literally. He was the guy who walked me and many other girls to their cars after Sunday night church because we were downtown and often had to park many blocks away. He, along with many other men, made sure the women arrived safely to their cars.
I’m not done… there’s still more…
If God is calling you to do something, you’ll know what you need to know when you need to know it.
The couple who was coming with this church pant to lead worship went to the ame college I did – fellow music majors in a small school. They were a few years ahead of me, so I knew of them much more than they knew of me, but there was an immediate connection.
So seven years after I thought I walked away from this ministry, I found myself to be the sole member of a church plant who was actually living on location. Five years after the rest of the team moved to Cincinnati from their various locations, five years after the church launched, I came on staff full time.
When it was just me in Cincinnati, I remember praying, “God why am I here by myself? When will you give me a community like the one I had in college?” I felt like I’d missed it. Maybe I moved when I wasn’t supposed to. Meanwhile God was probably thinking, “I’m not giving a community like what you had in college; I’m giving you the exact community you had in college.”
I wasn’t late – I was just too early.
Here’s what I learned…
You are only one small piece to a much larger puzzle meant to bear the image of it’s Designer.
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