As we headed into the hectic Women’s Leadership Forum season which included two YOU Lead training events as well, both Mary Margaret Collingsworth (Women’s Forum event coordinator) and I felt a big panic coming on.
Think with me a minute about your most recent ministry panic. Did you get a picture of yourself? What was your ministry panic experience?
Driving to work the morning after the panic, what I call my “forum tic” (when someone says, “Isn’t the Forum coming up soon?”) set in. Toby Mac’s song Steal My Show came on the radio. The Lord said to my heart, “Chris, it’s not YOUR show so why are you thinking it is?” I was reminded once again why we serve the Lord… because it’s HIS show!
The Lord also reminded me of a verse that helped me focus during a very difficult ministry season. “Let the morning being me word of your unfailing love for I have put my trust in you, show me the way that I should go for to you I lift up my soul.” Psalm 143:8 (NIV)
That morning, I shared with Mary Margaret this verse, Toby’s song, and also a sweet prayer that a friend of mine prayed for me in the past that I was reclaiming: “I pray for a peace that passes all understanding, but not only peace, calmness inside, where you don’t feel like you are running all the time. I pray that your concerns, that are ever present, will be all wrapped up in His assurance that He is always with you and that He is using every thought, every feeling, every anxious moment in every life to ultimately make manifest His love.”
I cannot tell you the difference it has made. While it hasn’t removed all obstacles to smooth every step, it has caused me to re-focus on Him in the midst of this hectic season. Knowing it’s HIS show and up to Him to move us to accomplish it His way, shows me His power!
Women’s leader Wendy Pope recently said in a conference, “The spiritual transformation of our audience rests on bigger and more capable shoulders than mine.” Aren’t you glad? No matter who your audience is, a small group of women you teach on Sunday morning or the overall women at large in your church, the responsibility for spiritual transformation rests on the Lord’s shoulders, not yours!
May I suggest five things next time panic sets in:
- Remind yourself that it is “His show”
- Quote Scripture that speaks into the situation (use Psalm 143:8 if you need it!)
- Ask a friend to pray with and for you
- Sing a song that claims truth about the situation and sing it over and over (or play it on your iPhone if you can’t sing!)
- Remember that spiritual transformation is God’s job and on His shoulders. Just obey as He lets you in on a small part of it!
