...A Brief Synopsis Of My Life So Far... (2)

I began to doubt the encounter I had had with God. I began to doubt that his yes meant yes. I decided that God never just says yes and gives to his children good things. God says yes, but you’ll have to do this. You’ll have to work really hard, complete 4 years of Bible college, top of your class, and lets not forget all of the community/ministry service you’re going to have to complete in between. I became really discouraged. It was all so much work. Did I really want this that badly? All of this hard work was discouraging and I began to feel so burnt out that I began to doubt the worth of the thing I could not stop myself from desiring. I was so jilted by all of the effort that came back with unsatisfying conclusions that I began to seriously wonder whether God wanted me to have this.

So I began to question. In frustration I would ask him, God, do you really want me to do this? Am I really called to missions or is this just something I’m chasing on my own accord? When God was consistent to tell me that he really had called me to missions I got even more frustrated and angry, with God and with myself. Maybe I don’t want this anymore. Maybe I never heard God. All of my previous attempts to please God proved this point. It seemed that everything I attempted, thinking that it was inspired by God was, in the end, very uninspired. I tasted the bitterness my supposed failures left on my tongue and felt wounded by a God whom I believed to have mislead me. I could not pass his test and so I would not have the thing that I desire most. Which, ironically, was a life lived in such intimacy with God that I would be willing to die for him.

Very soon after graduation I decided that I would not pursue missions. I would not be a missionary. I would find something else. Maybe I’d teach. Anything but missions because it was quite obvious that God did not intend for me to be involved in missions. And I tried very, very hard to see that through but within a semester of classes it became quite clear that I couldn’t just give up on something I’d wanted for so long. I started to calm down. I began to reconsider my previous temper tantrum and realize that God is steadfast and he doesn’t waste words. He doesn’t say yes if he doesn’t intend to see it through. The thing was I was tired. And I was no longer willing to throw myself into things headfirst anymore. No more work. I wasn’t going to beat my head against a wall trying to mould it into the right shape. I wouldn’t so adamantly deny that I wasn’t called to missions, but I wasn’t going to go out there and make it happen either. I was pouting and I praise God for his restraint because he had every right to flick me across the room while indignantly shouting, ’How dare you!’

I questioned the steadfast, decisive nature of God. God doesn’t sit on fences when it comes to making a decision. He’s already decided what he’s going to do, where he’s going to stand, even before the question is asked. And his yes, is a yes. It’s not a conditional ‘yes but’, it’s not a ‘maybe’; it’s a yes. When he says yes, believe him because he means it. I began to doubt that his yes meant yes because I began to question and disbelieve that he truly favoured me. I got my eyes off of God, placed a critical eye on myself and lost the sense of security and acceptance I had, until that point, been blessed with. With a critical eye wrongly labelled as constructive and helpful scrutinizing my every action I ended up creating a wrong picture of myself in my head which in turn caused me to lose confidence in my abilities to be who God called me to be. Even though I knew all the time that I couldn’t be that person without God, no matter how hard I tried.



....................END PART TWO....................

Cole.