If you aren't, then the references to the song won't make sense much, will they?
The truth is (and by now, if you were at Thursday's meeting, you all know I'm all for the cold, hard, gory truth) that what we're getting at here with this internship program is far beyond what I am capable of doing for you. Spiritual growth, y'all, is not something I can do for you. And that is what this internship is about.
Is it the free food and the hang time and the resume building and the record appealing and opportunity giving experience we advertised? Certainly. I can't wait to help you get plugged in. For those of you wanting to do music, I guess I mean that literally. But for the most part, I'm getting more involved in this church with you, not for you. Both the physical service and the honest spiritual growth are relatively new to me, too.
So if for some reason you feel behind, don't.
If for some reason you don't really feel like you measure up to the job, stop.
If you think that the parts when I sit and talk about God are the times to check out because He is just to far away, tune in.
If you don't really even know what spiritual growth looks like or how in the world it's going to happen in your life, join the club.
Is your testimony not impressive enough, too rough, embarrassing, humbling, raw, deep, complicated, too good, too bad, too short, too long? Do you not know what to say? Do you hurt because when I say our motto is "what is God telling me and what am I going to do about it?" you don't know how to hear God, much less what He is telling you?
You. are. not. alone. Your self-proclaimed little "fearless leader" here treads beside you. And it scares me that I am somehow entrusted with your spiritual wellbeing when I have not even scratched the surface of what it is to know and love God, to want Him in my life for myself. Much less to lead you there. But I would not be here, writing this, leading you, if I did not feel absolutely certain that this is what I am supposed to be doing.
I am scared because I know I'm not who you want to become like. Trust me. I feel uncool and inadequate more than you could possibly know. But I am confident because I know that God is who you're going to want to become like. Even if you don't feel that now, I am sure it is what we're all searching for in having joined this program. Everything that is wrong in our lives and in this world is because way back when we as people decided to quit trying to be like God and started trying to compete with Him. In competition for control, for joy, for fulfillment.
We'll take our control and we'll be perfectly happy with it, thank Him very much.
He'll see.
Who needs patience, or humility, or gentleness? I'll go looking for and find my own validation. Just sit back and watch how it's done, God.
(there's never a good way to denote sarcasm in the written word, but I hope you picked up on it over the past few lines).
Meanwhile, we ignore the part of us that knows in all of this competition with God, we'll never really be Him. We'll always wonder why bad things happen to good people, why bad people don't get what they deserve, why we have so much when have nots go starving on the streets at night. And if we allow ourselves, we visit that hole and realize that we'll never know the answer. That as much as we want to and as hard as we try, we will never be as good as other people expect us to be, as we want to be, or as we could be if we're working in our own strength, with our own thoughts, in our own ways. Sometimes revisiting that hole in my own life, the ways in which I don't measure up, is downright overwhelming. And I can't make you go there in your own life.
Only you can make that choice. To admit to God that you don't have the answers and that you feel out of control. Lonely. Inadequate. Cheapened. Guilty. Maybe you don't even feel like you feel burdened enough by how really sinful you are (and I am right there with you). And then I can't make you ask God to begin to reveal it to you. The tough thing about pride is that you don't really see it until it hits you, and then it slams you (those of you at the meeting tonight know that I know a little something about that, too!) I can tell you that we're all prideful. That wanting to believe we've got it under control, we don't have to pay attention to the God part of the internship-- this life, even-- it's pride. But. I can't convict you of it. I can't tell you where and how it rears its ugly head in your life. You have to find it. You have to want to change it.
I know because if I had a piece of paper tonight during my quiet time (that coincidentally (or not?) takes place on my closet floor, where my jeans from, well, you know, still sit balled up in the very far corner) that told me to lie face down on the ground and cry sincerely before God because I feel so not good enough, because I feel so burdened by the things I know y'all are struggling with (things that I don't even know in full), it would not have worked.
But I did do it.
Not because someone told me to, but because I felt it. With my heart I want you to know I'd give up the money from this job in a heartbeat to take away just a bit of the pain and stress you deal with.
But I can't. No money, no thing, no service act I help you coordinate will take away the pain or the stress. It might make you happy for a while, but the joy would still be missing. Take it from the girl who was raised with plenty, in want of very little, who did her best to dutifully serve the church from day 1-- the joy can still be missing.
I'd love to take the pain and stress away from you so that you could feel like you have the "Step 3: Who I am today" in your testimony mastered. But the truth is that you and I? We're works in progress. And that can be your Step 3. You can be sure that when you ask God to do something, He will bring about progress. You just have to be ready to look for it.
The pain and the stress? They are not of God. He never wanted to watch you struggle with it. He so badly wants to take it away from you that He sent His Son to die on a cross so that you could give it over. The pain and the stress and the feelings of inadequacy, I so wish I could take from you (and from myself). But then you'd miss it, and I'd miss it. What it is actually like to watch God work with it. To see Him use our lives despite us.
If you learn anything from me, if you grow at all in the next seven weeks, it will have been despite me. And it will have been despite yourselves.
Don't be humiliated by that you don't feel your story glorifies you.
Be humbled by that your story, despite yourself, can glorify God.
You have to want to let it.
Sometimes there is nothing to say before God. Sometimes you just have to go there and rest. Take yourself and all your problems, and put them before God. Tell Him you have nothing else to offer but this seemingly incomplete, inadequate life. Tell God you feel distant if you feel distant from Him. Tell Him you don't know how to serve or where to serve but that you want the heart of a servant because you're having a hard time striking it rich on your own. And don't wait to be rich to feel like God hears you. Don't wait until your knee feels fine again or your team wins or you get that A or that boy likes you or your family has their act together to believe that God hears you or is holding you. He doesn't need you to have your act together. He doesn't need to see you perfectly perched on that chair, He knows you're peeing in your chair (you know, metaphorically). Will you look crazy, imperfect, humiliated by getting up and showing Him the stains?
To anyone else you might. But is it worth swallowing your pride and showing Him the stains anyway to get a change of clothes?
He doesn't need you to look perfect. God knows that He is perfect and knows you aren't. The pressure is off there. The challenge is believing Him enough to expose our stains and trust Him to get the glory. He is willing to share it. He'll give you a change of clothes, a change of heart.
Do we want it?
Listen to the song again.
"Lord I'm tired
So tired from walking
And Lord I'm so alone
And Lord the dark
Is creeping in
Creeping up
To swallow me
I think I'll stop
Rest here a while
And didn't You see me cry'n?
And didn't You hear me call Your name?
Wasn't it You I gave my heart to?
I wish You'd remember
Where you sat it down
Chorus:
And this is all that I can say right now
i know it's not much
And this is all that I can give
yeah that's my everything
Bridge:
I didn't notice You were standing here
I didn't know that
That was You holding me
I didn't notice You were cry'n too
I didn't know that
That was You washing my feet"
For what it's worth (and I think it's worth a lot or I wouldn't be doing it), I am praying for each of you by name. Your concerns are neither too big nor too small for me to care. But what I hope you're getting is that they are neither too big nor too small for God to care. So I pray to Him on your behalf, that He'd begin to show you what and how to lay down in front of Him.
Also for what it's worth (and my salary says it's worth at least a couple thousand of dollars), I'm here for you. Call me ((501) 247-9067), text me, e-mail me (ssmith8@mail.umw.edu), yell my name from across the room if you need to talk or have an idea.
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