It is so easy for us to become lost in the day to day workings of life that we forget our identity...or we forget our inheritance, our heritage.
It is so easy for me, as a student leader, to feel discouraged. These questions continually rear their heads at me:
“Why aren’t people coming?”
“What are you doing wrong?”
And, accusations:
“You aren’t a good enough leader.”
“You need to do more and be different.”
In weekly meetings with a few faithful, it is easy for me to let these questions drag me into a well of depression. What can I improve on? How can we recruit more people? Am I even in the right place?
It is a frustrating thing to be one of the few faithful. Sometimes I wonder if it is really worth it, because I forget the story. The Story.
That is my passion in this--telling the Story to advance the Kingdom, bring in the outcasts, and give God the Glory.
It is sometimes that I wish others had the same passion for intentional story in the church.
And He has. Those few faithful who come every week, take a part in every skit, and brainstorm ideas with such fervency that puts my own passion to shame.
Yet I forget. I am with these few faithful, they are before me, and I think about those not here. I forget to be grateful for my few and faithful, passionate about intentionally telling Story to our community of students.
I often think I have failed somewhere along the way.
Am I too quiet?
Perhaps I intimidate people?
I must be too strange.
Then the still, quiet whisper reminds me:
“I Am Faithful.” And He is. “Your group is not defined by how many attend. Your leadership is not defined by how many attend. YOU are not defined by how many attend. YOU are defined by me--in my death and resurrection so that you can tell the Story. It does not matter how many there are. Trust and obey. What matters is how I will us you and your few faithful, if you will let Me.”
Amen.
In remembering that I strive from the identity that comes with being rooted in Christ, it frees me to tell His Story with even more passion. It frees me to risk and fail because my failures are not my identity. Christ is my King, my God, my identity.
What it comes down to, I believe, is trusting that God is good and true and He will never fail you, and take that and go forth in obedience to accomplish whatever He brings along your path and to love the people He puts before you.
