Unexpected
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In all of my thinking about the journey we have been on over the past year of planting Mercy City church, the thing I was not expecting was to be enjoying myself. I am not by nature the type of person to meet a stranger and invite them to coffee. I am surely not the type of person who would meet a stranger and invite them over to my house for dinner, but I have to say I have become that person and I sort of love it.
I knew nothing about church planting 6 months ago, I know very little today. The one thing I do know is that it is cause me to live out the Bible. Because we are planting a church I have gone out into the world with the gospel. I have gone out of my comfort zone to make new relationships and build God’s Church. In doing this I have had more fun doing ministry than I have ever had in my life. The past 3 1/2 months have been full of love, full of faith and full of Jesus.
There was a time in all of this that Matt and I felt “fairly confident” about reaching people. We even said we can reach the people if God can provide the finances. Ha! What fools we were! God is providing the money we have needed in a miraculous way. Most days I look around and I am shocked we have any money at all and yet God continues to provide what we need, exactly when we need it. Matt suggested I should have prayed for more than we need long before we ever needed it…but that is not the nature of this beast. It has been a constantly learning to lean into God for every need, for every single thing we need. We realized very quickly that we could not reach people without total dependance on the Holy Spirit.
There was a few days where we were feeling pretty low about reaching people. We had not really felt the momentum of building our launch team take off. It was in those moments that we prayed for direction. Almost immediately we felt that gentle nudge from the Holy Spirit, showing us our pride and our self-dependance. Quickly we changed our hearts, we asked God to lead us to the people, to show us the right way to reach this city and build the team that He has prepared for us. Almost over night we saw the tides change. The relationships and connections we are making are crazy! We are meeting people nearly everyday who have heard of Mercy City or who know of people we are now connected to and the team is growing. It was only when we surrendered totally dependance to God that we saw Him step in and lead.
I learned a valuable life lesson here, God can not take over the situations in my life that I feel I can handle on my own. It is getting to the point of saying, I can’t do anything without the Holy Spirit. I totally surrender my life to Jesus, that is when He steps in and leads and opens doors I could have never imagined opened on my own.
The other thing depending on God does is it begins to highlight little weak spots in my life. When there is really nothing I can do to make things happen certain insecurities start rising up. I have had to fight the urge to worry and fight the urge to speak negatively about our situation. Insecurity does not reveal itself in the convenient moments of life, insecurity rears it’s ugly head when we are least expecting it and it knocks our legs out of from under us. Insecurity keeps faith locked out and tries to close the door on everything God is doing. Not to mention feeling insecure WASTES MY TIME! I hate to be cliche, but I literally “ain’t got time for that.”
(Sorry I couldn't resist)
I am coming to understanding two things, first insecurity is something most everyone deals with at some point in their life and second, the only way to handle yourself with confidence is by leaning in to Jesus, everyday, in every situation. The process of planting Mercy City has revealed hidden strengths in my life but it has also highlighted my weaknesses. I am so thankful that it is in my weak places that God can be made strong, it is in those places He shows off. When God shows off there is no limit to what He can do. I can not wait to see what the next few months have in store and beyond that I know there is no limit to what God can do with a church who wholly trusts in Him.
