It wasn’t the Vision that caused the problems – it was how I handled the Passion.

“When the passion wells up in Wanda’s belly, you can hear the rumbling and you better get out of the way.” A pastor told me he had just come from a meeting where he had shared this reality.

Yep, the passion would boil up and out
and not always in ways honoring God.

I prayed often for God to give me the ability to share this passion, to pass it on in ways that would be pleasing to Him. It felt like I failed over and over.

There are so many memories of failures that rattle through my mind. It would usually go something like this:  I would be talking to someone when I would get so excited over a certain aspect of the Children’s Ministry vision that the Passion would blow out like a vicious wind at the other person. I would try to hold the passion back; I would even be praying as I spoke. Having felt the person pull back, I thought, “I’ve gone too far.” As I walked away I felt embarrassed and angry at myself for being so forceful.

This happened in formal meetings too.

I have wondered how my feelings of terror affected these strong outbursts. It was/is strange because when the passion drives me, it is as if the terror is lifted – it is gone during that time. I feel free. I feel like I am soaring on an angel’s wing.

As I think of it, I wonder if the passion releases a lot of adrenalin that drives me to speak without thinking how it is coming out.

I had heard rumblings. I knew I was in trouble;
I didn’t know how bad it was.

I arrived at work one morning and the executive pastor called me into his office. Without ceremony he told me I was fired and that I should take everything and leave right away. I sat there shocked.

As tears flowed, I gathered up my personal things and headed to the car. A friend called out, “Wanda, I’ll meet you at your house.” That afternoon, hours were spent on the floor of my bedroom crying and laughing together and then crying some more.

I was broken! I had failed!

As I read through my prayer journals from the months previous to the firing, there are several posts mentioning a nudging I felt from God.  “God, do you really want me to resign? But where would I go? We need the money – how would we survive?  Father show me what to do.”

God showed me what to do!

That night at dinner, Joe shared with our teenage children the passage in Acts where Paul and Barnabas parted ways. He explained that God at times allows for there to be differences within the family of God, for His purposes.

Joe and I prayed about what to do on Sunday. We both felt God wanted us to attend the church to show that we were not holding any animosity. We truly believed God wanted us to be there.

An elder’s wife stopped me in the patio, handed me a small wood- carved bird, saying…  

“Wanda I was praying for you this week
and this is the thought I had.
When a baby bird is reluctant to leave the nest,
the mother bird shoves it out of the nest
so it will take flight.
God has shoved you out of the nest
because He has greater things for you to do.”

 

Another friend mailed me an eagle with this note:
“Wanda, I have seen you knocked down so many times
and you always get back up – you will this time also.”

 “Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.”
Isaiah 40:30 & 31 (ESV)

The next week, the pastor called and asked us not to come back to the church. Joe and I could understand his reasoning. We began praying for the Lord to lead us to the church he wanted us to attend. The mother of one of our son’s friends called and said she thought we should attend their church.  We visited and stayed.

In that same week, a friend came over – his wife was a very close friend of mine. We sat in the living room and visited, it was awkward. Then he told us he was sorry to have to do this but they could no longer be our friends. They felt they would be banished.

Wow! That was hard.
Joe and I could understand but, oh how it hurt.

Joe and I prayed and felt the Lord wanted us to meet with the pastor so that the relationship could end in a godly place. One of the last things he said to me was, “Wanda, when I hired you I thought I was just hiring a mom and housewife – was I ever surprised!”

As I crawled through those days (yes, it felt like I was crawling), I questioned the Passion and Vision I believed came from God – did it?

Was I driven by God or was it just my pride? What part did the terror have in it all?

Assignment 32

My CHALLENGE to you —

Let’s grab a cup of coffee … imagine you and I are sitting together chatting.

“The only way we can be of use to God is to
let Him take us through the crooks and crannies of our
own characters. It is astounding how ignorant we are about ourselves!”
My Utmost for His Highest, January 12 Oswald Chambers

The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
 “I the LORD search the heart
and test the mind,
to give every man according to his ways,
according to the fruit of his deeds.”
Jeremiah 17:9–10 (ESV)

To this day, in regard to my passion and vision, I’m not fully confident of what is from the Triune God, what is pride and what part the terror plays in how I express it. Only in the last few years have I become aware of how the terror is lifted when the passion boils up and out.

I’ve prayed and prayed for answers to this. A few months ago I came across a book written by Tim Keller, “The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness.”  The book focuses on 1 Corinthians 3:21-4:7  My suggestion is to read all of 1 Corinthians 3 and 4 to get more of the context.  Below are the three verses that have really ministered to me.

1 Corinthians 4:3–5

But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you
or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself.
For I am not aware of anything against myself,
but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.
Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time,
before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden
in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.
Then each one will receive his commendation from God. (ESV)

As God walks us through the “crooks and crannies of our own characters” He shows us bit by bit what we need to surrender to Him. Because the heart is so deceitful, I need to continually ask the Lord to show me my heart the way He sees it. Psalm 139: 23 & 24

Only God knows if it is Himself or my pride that drives me. Only God knows what part the terror plays in all of it.

If I’m not continually fearing judgement of others or myself, then I can have an abandonment in serving the Lord; even if I look like a fool in doing so; even if I am judged.

Key is for me to continually seek Him and to continually ask Him to show me my heart as He sees it.

“It is arduous work to keep the master ambition in front.
It means holding one’s self to the high ideal year in and year out,
not being ambitious to win souls or to establish churches
or to have revivals but being ambitious only to be “accepted of Him.”
It is not lack of spiritual experience that leads to failure,
but lack of laboring to keep the ideal right. …

Any ambition which is in the tiniest degree
away from this central one of being “approved unto God”
may end in our being castaways.
Learn to discern where the ambition leads,
and you will see why it is so necessary to live
facing the Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 9:27)

My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers, March 17th

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