Of mind, heart and soul. 

It’s a cold, cloudy and windy but beautiful Sunday. I had a late night last night watching series. At some point, I told myself that I should sleep because I would struggle to wake up in time for church the next day. Yet I carried on watching nonetheless. A slight pang of guilt stabbed at me. I brushed it aside. I set my mind on attending church online instead of going in physically the next day. Interestingly, I woke up in good time for church today. One of the first things I did when I woke was draw my curtains. It had been raining last night and it was still overcast and looked like rain.

I reaffirm my decision to attend church online and set about my morning routine before preparing for church. Something is nagging at me though. I realise it is because I didn’t spend quiet time with God yesterday like I intended to. I also come face-to-face with the fact that I have been hiding from God, running from Him. I pause what I am busy with and approach God. I start to talk to Him and as I do, I come to the realisation that I have been trying to do so many things on my own i.e. using my knowledge and capabilities as opposed to relying on God. 

“Little flock over here has been trying to fix it and build it herself. I thought I was past that!” I say to God (this is something I have struggled with a lot). No wonder I’ve been avoiding, hiding, running. Realising there are some attitudes, motivations, desires and reasoning that I need to allow God to deal with, to work on, I put on some worship music. I pray as I sing and sing as I pray asking God to prune, mould, and reshape as He sees fit. A sense of peace begins to wash over me. Finally, it is time to attend church online. I have been looking forward to it and worshipping corporately with my church community.

Sadly, there is a technical glitch. Initially, I’m very disappointed and a thought pops into my head, “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d gone to church physically.” I ignore it. Guilt and condemnation are not from God. I decide to load a sermon from a few weeks back that I’d missed at the time. I’m glad I did because several things in that sermon resonated with me. Like me, the preacher had gone through a period of asking God, “What next?” Like me, the preacher had gone through a period of discovering and growing to understand, with God’s help, her gifts, her calling, her identity and her place. 

She drew parallels from many women in the Bible (it was a Mother’s Day message) like Mary the mother of Jesus and Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist. These women had experiences and encounters that may have challenged or confused them. Not only did these women ponder and meditate on these things, they had the blessing of having other women come alongside them and affirm them and the calling Christ had placed on them. She spoke of how we can do the same for others. We can intentionally point the people God has placed in our lives to Jesus Christ. 

We can encourage them to become who Christ has called them to be. Likewise, we can allow God to shape us and lead us into who He created us to be more and more. We can connect with Him and discover who we are and understand our calling in Him. It was, once again, a message that felt tailor-made for me for the exact moment I found myself in. I found myself recalling all the times I have asked God what my place and purpose is. Sure, it is to serve and glorify Him, this I know. What I have asked and continue to ask of God is, “Show me what that looks like on a granular level, on a practical level, on a day-to-day basis”.

Love,