I don’t remember where I had been, but I came rolling up the driveway just as Daniel, our oldest son who runs Doorposts was getting in his car to go get his wife and children to join us for lunch and the afternoon.
“Hey, I just remembered, today is the day Kevin Swanson is interviewing you for his program!” he said as he opened his car door.
“Gasp! When? ”
“At 1 o’clock our time.”
“Uh, that’s in an hour!”
“Yeah, bye!” (Actually, he wasn’t quite that heartless, but he did leave!)
Well, I went into panic mode. First of all, I am not a speaker. That’s why I write. My mind tends to go blank when I have to speak. Second, when Daniel talked me into saying yes to this interview, we agreed that I would need to know what the questions were going to be before the interview. We had seen no questions.
The girls and I raced around trying to put lunch together while I also tried to gather my wits and calm my spirit. I wasn’t succeeding.
Daniel and his family arrived and he announced that the email with the questions had come – thirty minutes before the interview. This is when I really started to fail my trust-in-God-or-trust-in-myself test. The questions were scary! I needed notes! I didn’t have time to make notes! “God, I don’t do this sort of thing!”
Katelyn (bless her heart) hurried to print out some recent blog posts. Daniel highlighted major points. I looked at the pages and didn’t comprehend anything. It’s embarrassing to admit how much whining I was doing. “I can’t do this!”
Duh.
It was about time I realized that! Of course I couldn’t do it. But God could, and it was time (actually past time) to remember that and put my trust in Him. He had sovereignly brought this task into my life, and He was ready and willing to equip me for it. We prayed, the phone rang, Daniel passed it off to me, and God kept me from passing out. 🙂
How many years will it take before I remember that it is always God working through me? I can’t do anything in my own strength. I can’t mother in my own strength. I can’t write in my own strength. I can’t even breathe without God enabling me to do so.
I take so much for granted. I so easily forget that I am totally dependent on God. Thankfully, God knows this, so He graciously steers me into situations where it is obvious that I’m in trouble on my own, where I know I can’t do it without Him. It’s funny how it works – the more aware I am of my helplessness, the greater my reliance on Him. The more I rely on Him, the more I learn to trust Him. The more I step out and trust Him, the more I witness His faithfulness over and over. And the more I see His faithfulness, the more I grow to love Him.
My weakness doesn’t matter, because He is strong. My weakness is actually a blessing because it drives me to Him.
“. . . for when I am weak, then am I strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)
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So — if you have thirty minutes to spare, and want living proof that God sustains us in our weakness, you can listen to the results of my humbling day at Generations Radio! 🙂
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