This Is His Time

This Is His Time

 

            Three days.  In exactly three days I’ll be nineteen-years-old.  For most people, especially young people like me, birthdays are times of excitement and anticipation, but for me these past few years, they’ve been times of reflection, perhaps this year more than any.

            My parents and I watched a movie last week called This Is Our Time.  For being the girl who never cries in movies, tears were running down my face the whole time, and even later that night when I was alone in my bedroom, hours after the movie had ended, I was still crying as God spoke to me through its message.

            The movie tells the story of five friends who graduate together from college and head out with high hopes and ambitions of changing the world and making a difference.  It introduces us to Ryder, an outgoing, likeable guy who gets a promising job working with social media.  It introduces us to his un-official girlfriend Catherine, a bold young lady with her dream job at a big company.  We meet Alé, a sweet, warm-hearted, loving young woman and her husband Luke, both of who move to India to work with a real-life group called Embrace A Village who share God’s love while caring for people with leprosy.  And then there’s Ethan.  Alé’s brother.  Ethan who has an English degree and is a good writer, but Ethan who is single, turned down by the graduate schools, and finds himself working in his dad’s sandwich shop while his friends, sister, and brother-in-law all go off chasing their dreams and changing the world.  Ethan who is listening for God’s voice of direction but hears only silence.  Ethan who feels like he’s sitting on a bench on the sidelines watching from a distance.

            Of the five young people in the movie, I related most to Ethan.  I saw myself in Ethan.  Single, yes.  Turned down in attempts to step out, yes.  A good writer, yes.  Listening for direction but hearing nothing, yes.  And sitting on a bench?  Well, I’ve described it before as sitting on a shelf instead, but you get the point.

            So now that you about Ethan’s situation, let me give you a glimpse into my life as an almost-nineteen-year-old.  Let me share part of my story.  At the beginning of the year, I had high ambitions like the rest of the kids my age.  I was going to get an interning position as a horse trainer when I graduated from high school, become a professional horse trainer, and additionally, write Christian novels.  I had even chosen a literary agent to contact about presenting my manuscript to a publishing house and representing me.  I was set.  My course was charted.

            Then came the end of March.  God told me it was time to move on from those old dreams.  They had been my plans for my future and not His plans for me.  They had been for a season, but they were not meant to be a part of my life forever, and my passion for those dreams was no longer what it had once been.  So I left them behind and looked toward the future with bright anticipation.  I had no idea where I was going, but I felt confident that God had something big in store for me just around the bend.

            Then came graduation.  It was the beginning of June and I was a high school graduate.  According to my plans, I should’ve been interning with a horse trainer and had a novel on its way to the press already.  But instead, I found myself with a diploma in hand and not a hint of direction for my future.  Without any clear guidance from the Lord as to what He wanted me to do, I vouched not to go to college unless or until He told me that His calling for me was something I would need a degree for.  Nonetheless, the uncertainty and the questioning of His direction for my life was confusing and a little discouraging to say the least, and my ACT scores I received in the mail did nothing to boost my morale as I realized I hadn’t even met the college readiness benchmark in science and mathematics.

            I knew I would need to find a job to supply me with an income.  That’s when God opened the door for me to be a nanny to an eight-month-old baby girl two days a week.  I was elated at the opportunity to not only make the little bit of pocket-change I needed but to be able to invest in a little life at the same time.

            But this too was not to last though I realized when, due to understandable financial circumstances, I was let go.  Exactly a month after being hired, I found myself unemployed again.  That very day, however, God provided me with the opportunity of a six-week job co-teaching a class at my church for elementary-age children on Wednesday nights.  I accepted.  The payment from those six weeks was a blessing to my depleting bank account and I grew attached to the children and loved every minute of teaching them.  They taught me so much in return.  But the six weeks passed, and again, I was without a job.

            By this time, I had applied for my first real job and had been rejected.  I filled out several other applications and heard nothing more from the companies.  Like Ethan’s father in the movie, my dad tried urging me to search more for jobs, to apply for more positions, to do something with myself because he loved me and wanted me to be productive and successful.  But rejection and discouragement had begun setting in.

            By the time last month that I had applied for a job, been interviewed for my very first time ever, and had been turned down, my feelings had grown to be more than just rejection and discouragement though.  God had given me passions.  A passion to work with children and a burden to minister to teenage girls.  And at the thought of retail or restaurant work…  I knew God had something else for me.  I knew He had something more in store for me, an opportunity for me to use those passions He had placed inside my heart.  A job that I could be excited and enthusiastic about, rather than simply working for the sheer necessity of money.  I felt like I was looking for a job for the wrong reasons. 

            So there I found myself.  Unemployed, uncertain of my future, unsure of what to do next, and living, to an extent, just day-to-day in waiting and listening for His voice of direction.  But it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. 

            I watched as the kids I grew up with made plans and went off to pursue their dreams and make their ambitions become reality.  Some got jobs; some were in college.  One girl from my church was going to school for a biology major; another wanted to become a teacher and work on the mission field.  Two girls were considering degrees as nurses, and one had even already spent a season working on a foreign mission field, as had a young man in our church.  One guy was working toward becoming a special education English teacher, and God had even called one young man to move far away out of state.  My best friend was witnessing at her job and had gotten plugged into a college group at her church, making friends with her amiable personality.  Through Facebook, I had reconnected with kids I had known as a little girl, and I learned one girl was now working as a tutor while finishing high school and another had a successful singing career ahead of her with several of her own albums already for sale on iTunes.

            And me.  What was my dream?  I wanted to teach a Sunday school or some kind of church class for children, and I wanted to write Christian books for teenage girls, maybe eventually lead a Bible study for girls, and perhaps even speak at girls’ retreats someday.  But instead, I found myself without a job, therefore without an income, without seeing any green light from God, and without any idea of how to go about pursuing those dreams and how He wanted me to use those passions.  I felt like I was sitting on a shelf, simply watching others and living life’s adventures through their lives.  I felt left behind.  Watching as they entertained the social life I’ve never known, watching as they went off to places I only dream of seeing someday.  Watching as relationships fell together for some of them.  Wondering what my calling was, what my purpose was.  What I’m even supposed to do while I’m here.  I cheered others in their goals and their journeys from the sidelines, but I only dreamed of ever playing in the game myself.  I was the girl who shared encouragement to raise morale, but whose own morale was running low. 

I began to feel slightly inferior, slightly less significant.  Why was God making me wait so long?  Why was He keeping me on the sidelines when I was so eager and willing to get in the game and be used by Him to touch lives and make a difference?  Couple all that with donating your hair in pursuing humility, the excitement of being a first-time aunt, and some distance between you and your best friend, and you have some major emotional over-activity going on.  To say I was confused, discouraged, and less than motivated is an understatement.

            And then I watched This Is Our Time, and for the first time, as I watched my feelings and struggles portrayed in the lives of those five college graduates in the story, I didn’t feel like such an oddball anymore.  I didn’t feel weird or over-dramatic.  For the first time, I began to think that maybe my feelings were more normal for a young adult than I realized.  Through the message of that movie, God brought me a new perspective and introduced to me some new ideas.

            There’s a scene in the movie when Ethan is talking to his former college professor.  It’s perhaps one of the best scenes in the movie.  They’re discussing life callings.  “But that’s the problem with calling,” Professor Callahan tells Ethan.  “Too often we think of it as something we are meant to do, when really it’s something we’re meant to be.  God may have seemingly random assignments for us to do all through our lives, but they’re only going to make sense from the person He’s made you to be.

“So in this moment when you’re asking a lot of questions that you’ll never have the answers to, the most important question is, ‘Who is God asking me to be?’”

This struck me.  All those months I had been watching others and yearning to fulfill God’s calling on my life.  But as the words of the professor in that movie resonated in my spirit, I realized that maybe I had had it wrong all that time.  I had been feeling unfulfilled because I thought there was something else I should be doing.  That God had put me on a shelf and I wasn’t being used like I so longed to be.

            But that night, as God spoke to my heart late into the early hours of the morning, I realized I wasn’t on the bench.  I wasn’t sitting in the dugout on the sidelines, watching.  I was in the game after all.  I was just in the outfield away from the action that gets in the news and gets publicized.

            I began evaluating my life through this new lens.  Yes, God had given me passions to use to bring Him glory, and these were a part of me now, a part of the new me He had begun making me into.  A part of the person He was asking me to be.  They were a part of the person He’s uniquely called me to be.  So if my real calling was not something He calls me to do but something He calls me to be, then maybe I had been walking in my calling and not even realized it.

            I thought of the radical changes He’s done in my character over the past spring and summer.  I thought of my passions.  He had opened the door of opportunity for me to babysit for some couples in my church: I was working with children.  He had opened the door of opportunity for me to encourage a young friend and set for her a good role model: I was ministering to teenage girls.  He had opened the door of opportunity for me to share His truths on my blog and my Facebook: I was writing for His glory.  I realized that I was already using the passions and the gifts that I had so long yearned to use.  I had been trying to work by my own timetable, and God doesn’t work like that.  He works on His schedule.  As the five young adults in the movie learned, it’s ultimately His time, not ours.

            We all have our dreams and our ideas of how we should use the talents that God has given us, but as I learned, sometimes, our ideas of how they should be used and His ideas aren’t always the same.  I was thinking more along the lines of big scale, and when I wasn’t seeing that happening, I felt unfilled because I felt like I wasn’t fulfilling His calling for me by using my gifts.  But God was thinking more small scale, more the everyday stuff.  Why?  Because it isn’t so much about what we do as it is about what we are.

When I graduated back in June, I had been a dreamer.  I always had been.  I had expectations.  But the real world wasn’t what I had expected it to be, and I found myself trying to find my place of belonging and acceptance in the adult world.  Nothing happened the way I had thought it would.  Maybe someday it will and God will call me to those big assignments I dream of, or maybe it never will unfold the way I had thought it would.  But though my assignments may seem small in the outfield where few people may ever see my work, I’m learning in walk in the role He’s called me to.  I am fulfilling my calling even where I am.

Yes, this post was more of a journal entry than much of a devotional, but I pray that somewhere one of you who reads this will find encouragement from my story for your own life.  I realize that some aspects of this post were a little vague in their lessons and that I’ve left some unanswered questions and some loose ends to the story.  There’s a reason for this.  Because there were too many lessons and too much to share in each of those loose ends to fit into this post.  Needless to say, in the next few posts coming, I’ll be sharing a few more of the lessons that God taught me through the movie This Is Our Time and through my reflections surrounding my upcoming birthday.  Until then, may God’s love envelope each of you today.  Be blessed, readers.

 

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Jeremiah 29:11

 

 

 

 

Abstract photo courtesy: www.123rf.com

 

~We’ve all heard of the phrase “pulling on her/ his heartstrings,” but heart-chords?  I was struggling to decide what to name my blog.  I wanted it to be a name that was both creative and meaningful.  As I pondered, my gaze fell upon my acoustic guitar where it stands in my bedroom, and the Lord reminded me that our hearts- our lives- are instruments.  They are constantly in song, but what melody our heart plays is each of our own decisions.  They can play a melody for praise or for entertainment.  A musician selects his songs according to his audience.  So do we.  Whether our audience is the world or the Lord, our song will be different.  This blog is designed to first, increase my awareness in finding God and His guidance in my every day and second, to share the music lessons He teaches me in tuning my heart to learn the chords of praise He longs to play on my heart-instrument.  Music is a powerful tool.  Use it for His glory.  “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.  Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.” Psalm 40:3