Reason #817

Aaron takes good care of me. He’s always eager to help me out in any way, and I really appreciate that. Thankfully, he’s a modern day man married to a modern day woman, and I’m fortunate to have someone who realizes that being a husband means so much more than just “bringing home the bacon,” so to speak. He’s completely able to do any and everything, and he’s willing to take a shot at it if it’s new to him. He is a perfectionist with persistent tendencies, as am I, and so I know he is always able to accomplish any task at hand. Of course, these traits don’t always bode well for us because we find that we get easily frustrated with ourselves. We find that if one little thing goes wrong, we analyze it to death in order to try and figure out how we can prevent it from happening again. And if we feel like we’re just doing “okay” but could be doing more, then we have a hard time being content in the place we are.

 

The interesting thing is that when I look at Aaron, I see things in him that he doesn’t see. When Aaron looks at me, that same phenomenon takes place. Lately, we’ve struggled with not feeling content with where we are in life. We know what we want but we have a hard time letting it go and being exactly who and what God has called us to be. There’s this little force within telling us if only we could be what we’re dreaming to be, if only we could get to that level, we’d be satisfied. We’d feel like we’re really making a difference in the world. If we could be that/them/there then we’d know we made it. But sometimes we have a hard time accepting the here and now because we suffer from the thought that if we’re not at the top, we’re at the bottom.

 

We talked about this on the way home from church yesterday, and I realized that we look at our lives and we don’t see the gifts God has given us because we’re viewing everyone else’s gifts and wanting those instead. If we can just study enough, pray more, do better, than we can be like them. But the thing is, we’re to be like Jesus. And for the sake of the body, the Lord gave us all different gifts so that the church would be whole and complete.  Because He has a plan for each one of us. We have plans for ourselves, and we can do our best to achieve them, but it’s God’s plan that ultimately prevails. We only know a tiny, tiny portion of the picture, and so we have to trust His plan. Even when it’s hard to be content, even when His plans don’t match up with our desires, we trust that He is using us in the most effective way He desires. Because God’s will is perfect and it’s there for a reason. He calls us to all different things in life and the thing is, it’s not so much what He calls us to do, it’s how we do it. It’s the position of our heart. It’s about serving God in every way, every day.  God loves our willing hearts, and that’s what is most impressive to Him. It’s not the size of the platform we serve from. It’s not the number of people who know our name or whether or not we ever publish a book. God is pleased when we serve Him whole-heartedly, day in, day out, wherever He has placed us. And when He moves us, if He moves us, wherever He moves us, we still serve Him because that’s what we’re all called to do.

 

#817 - Because He has given each one of us an important, specific, useful role.

 

"The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ." - 1 Corinthians 12:12