Year 3 is flashing a cruel smile of daunting proportions.
The City has welcomed me back with its usual carelessness. My friends, and Bible College as a whole, however, have been shining the light of Christlike encouragement back into my heart. I am not alone, and am surrounded by precious souls, kids, really, seeking to minister to the broken and chase after the face of our Lord.
I am eager to dig in. I am frightened about what I have to do. I am delighted in what papers, what research, and what projects I have before me. I want to crawl in a hole and let someone else do them for me. I don’t want to have to do an internship. I’m scared.
At the end of summer, and the beginning of a new chapter in my life, God led me to Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians. Sitting here and feeling unprepared, insufficient, and hardly ready to be engaging in the kind of thinking and classload that I am about to take on, there is the truth of God:
“Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:4-6).
God has made me sufficient: not only to have confidence in my relationship with him, but to be a minister of this new covenant. Unlike the law, which condemns and kills, this is a life-giving covenant, God in us.
God in me. Thank you, Holy Spirit.
He is who makes me capable, able, and sufficient — in more ways than one. I am sufficient in my standing before him, but I am sufficient to carry this message! I am weak; he makes me strong.
I’m pretty sure that means I’m ready. Even if I feel like I’m not, I am, for God has brought me to this place to serve him and learn and go out to minister to others.
I’m pretty sure that means there is an internship, and there is provision, and there is divine assistance, and a High Priest, and eternal hope.
I’m pretty sure that means I will do great, even if my definition of great is different from God’s. The narrow path is not a smooth one.
He is not done molding me into his vessel. Phil 1:6 says that our Lord is carrying on the good work he started in me.
I cannot see; I pray for more faith, God, to believe you have my future and that you’ll make me capable of doing this.
