When God calls you to do something big, it may seem out of the blue and something you haven’t done before in your life. However, if you look back on it, it was always there, you just didn’t know it at the time.
Such was the case of using my gift of using my words for God’s people. I remember one of the first times I spoke in a public setting outside of preaching at my college. It was years before I had spoken in Kenya or other countries I have visited such as Brazil and Ecuador.
It was at my grandmother’s funeral, shortly after graduating from college. This was the grandmother who took me to movies and to restaurants. She invited me over many times to spend the night at her little apartment, where a gallon of milk and Oreo cookies would be waiting for me. She was far from perfect, as she often cried and often stretched the truth to get her way. However, as one of her grandchildren, I was special. I matter. I was important. With the life she lived out before me, she communicated to me the precious gift of quality time.
So when I gave her eulogy on that August day, I simply wanted to honor my grandmother and the impact she made on my life. However, I also wanted to point others to the true source of love: Jesus. I quoted lyrics from The Beatles “All you Need is Love”, while reminding people that Jesus is the only one that empowers us to truly love people.
A few years later, my brother was getting married to the girl of his dreams. I was glad that God had given him a girl that loved God and loved people so passionately. Yet, deep in my heart, I wanted the same thing for myself. It was while I was battling these feelings, that I felt the prompting of God to give a speech at my brother’s rehearsal dinner.
I took the time to carefully craft my speech so that my brother knew the impact he made on my life. My brother and I were close in age growing up, about 18 months apart. We did everything together like, playing baseball and football together, while also playing games with our toys in the backyard. Yes, we both irritated each other a lot, but we made each other better, whether we care to admit it or not.
So on that March day, I gave a speech that honored my brother and thanked him for the impact he made on my life. It wasn’t a speech that was designed for a mass group of people, I just wanted my brother to hear me out and see how God used him in a special way in my life. After my speech, my brother rushed to go to the bathroom. I just thought he really had to go to the bathroom and couldn’t hold it any longer. I was later told that he cried in the bathroom, as he didn’t wanted any one to see him crying. My words had made an impact in my brother’s life more than I ever could imagine.
I also remember a few years later, giving a brief speech at my dad’s retirement party. I really didn’t have anything planned at the time, and thought I stumbled through my words. I simply wanted to thank my dad for the sacrifices he made in sending my brother and I to private school.
These speeches at the time, I thought were just one time occurrences. I just was following through a specific call God had given me to speak His words to His people. I never truly admit to myself that God would truly use my words on a bigger platform. I would never admit to myself, much less others that I was a writer.
I remember one time, a friend of my brother’s who heard two of these speeches, taking me home one day after a church event or something like that. He told me that I had a gift with words, and should consider a career in it or something like that. I told him maybe I would consider it, but deep in my heart, I didn’t see how my words could play a bigger impact.
So outside of these speeches and sermons given in foreign countries, I didn’t really use my gift with words. I also gave inspirational thoughts on facebook now and then, but I really just was sharing promptings God was placing on my heart at the time.
However, in the middle of these speeches and sermons given in foreign countries, I started to be apart of a ministry for young adult ministry at my home church. I experienced true life giving community as friends made the effort to get to know me and spend time with me. I appreciate people getting to know me and share life with me. I had been apart of a small group prior to time in Kenya and enjoyed it very much. But once I went to Kenya and tried to share my life with them, all I heard was crickets except for one person. It was hurtful, as I tried to share my life with them, but they were busy in their day to day lives with no time for me. It was hard for me to see that life was going forward for them in new ways, just as it was for me. My lack of community in Maryland made me determined to find community in a new way once I It made me determined to find community in a new way.
After a few years of being in this community, I wanted to find a way to use my gifts in a new way. I wanted to possibly lead a small group for a selected period of time, so I emailed the leader of the ministry. She wondered if leading a group was the right fit for me, but she wanted to know of my other gifts and abilities. I told her about my gift of writing, which was a big thing for me because I wasn’t using my gift a lot at that time. She suggested me possibly writing devotionals for the ministry and they would be shared on social media. I was up for the new challenge, as it helped me to fan the flame the gift of writing that God had placed in my heart long ago.
When I wrote these devotionals, they helped serve as a catalyst for growth in my relationship with God. They helped me to process what God was teaching me and help me to see that what he wanted for me was not clarity, but simple trust in him in whatever season I was facing. This lesson would be put to the test when a woman I was talking to for six months said she was not interested in dating me. It was so, so hard for me because I had put my hopes and dreams in this relationship, not realizing that the true abundant life came in following Jesus and His plan for me.
So after this lesson, I found God bring his healing touch of life through writing and making my relationship with God a priority. God was beginning to take the broken pieces of my life and make them into something beautiful, even though I couldn’t see it all at the time. I was open and honest with God, sharing with him my hopes and fears. I was downcast, but was determined to see what God was going to do next in my life.
Then as I was making my relationship with God a priority, I decided to make my one last attempt in dating and finding the woman of my dreams. I dived into the world of online dating, investigated the possibility of this so called woman, but really thought it was not possible. Then God surprised me. I started talking to a missionary in Ecuador named Jennifer and we found we had similar interests. However, most of all, I was attracted to her love for Jesus and for living the abundant life Christ had for her. Over time, I found myself enjoying this new found friendship, but was very hesitant in having my heart broken again. I shared with her my devotionals, and felt her heart been drawn to mine as she read them. I was very hesitant to share them with her as one of them dealt with my breakup, but I felt God directed me to do so even if it was very uncomfortable in doing so.
Then a few months later, I found myself falling in love with this woman, a woman who I had never met, but God was drawing my heart to hers in a way I couldn’t describe. I imagined a life with us together, and God in the center of it. I didn’t know what that exactly would look like, but had hoped we could serve together in Ecuador. It was as if, something greater was happening that I couldn’t describe.
We later met in Indianapolis after a few weeks after I had asked her to be my girlfriend. She was on a furlough from her term as a missionary. I was confident prior to our meeting, she was nervous in meeting me. But as we talked on her way to a church in Pennsylvania and (dropping me off back in Maryland,) our hearts connected deeper than they had ever before. God was giving us the confidence to move forward in our relationship every day, as God was using each of us to grow in our individual relationships with God.
Then came the day our hearts were forever tied together on a warm, but sometimes windy day. Two of my favorite songs, “The Great Adventure” and “I will be here” by Steven Curtis Chapman were in our wedding. The minister used his wedding speech to help draw people closer to Jesus, the cry that Jennifer and I wanted our lives to do together as one.
We thought our time in the States may be short before heading to Ecuador. I had began the application process in serving together in Ecuador and thought that this is where God wanted us to serve together. Serving overseas as a missionary was a cry of my heart, and it would be a join to serve God together. Then the dream of serving God together in Ecuador died, as I my application was denied a day before our vision trip to Ecuador.
I didn’t know the next steps in our life together. I thought I had everything figured out. God got us through it all with great friends and family, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next. Jennifer and I dived deep into serving God at church, but didn’t know the next big thing God was calling to do. I had forgotten that God wanted to keep me in the moments he had for me, to take care of my wife and my son on the way. I had also had let go of the possibility that God could have any plans to use my gift of writing once again.
Then two years ago, I attended an event called the Global Leadership Summit via simulcast at my home church. I had attended the event a few times and had gotten great insights from them every time. However, I really didn’t take the time to act on them and let them play an impact in my life.
So I wasn’t expecting that much to come from the summit, nothing that would be life changing to say the least. Then God surprised me with a talk from a speaker named Jo Paxton. She said a quote that caused me to examine what God had in store for the next chapter in my life: “What book is not being written because of your past?
I later got to thinking how my time in counseling in college had wrecked me to thinking that I couldn’t make a true impact in the world around me. God surprised me time and time again with him using me through speeches like the one above, and sermons given in foreign countries. But now God was calling me to something bigger than I ever before. Who am I to write a book??
Music has always been a big passion of mine and one of the things that draws me so close to God. I felt that perhaps God, could use my love of music and the way it has intersected with my faith journey, to draw people closer to God through my writing. So I started writing on facebook and later a blog about songs that had impacted me. I got great feedback, and was so encouraged that God was using me in profound ways. I felt more alive than I had been before, as God was also teaching me new things about Him and what it meant to walk with Him day by day.
When I had finished writing my blog entries, I started the next step in compiling it as a book. It was hard, but God provided two friends to help me in the editing process. God was showing himself at work, that this was what he wanted me to do.
However, along the way, I got overwhelmed by the thought of writing a book. I didn’t know how I could juggle it, with making time for my wife and my son, working, and also helping out in the community. I thought my wife needed all my spare time, when all she wanted was quality time- not “quantity time”. If I spent time in writing, it was not selfish to spend time in growing and honing my craft. This thing that made me come alive was also a thing that could help my family too. As I make time to grow and spend time on things I care about, it improves the quality of the life of my family. So right here, right now, God is calling me back to writing.
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