October 25th, 2004
 

Are you hungry to serve God, yet feel underutilized, mired in some sort of maddening “holding pattern?” This morning I was reading Psalm 131 and it triggered these thoughts.

Who does God select for assignments of strategic importance and how? Way back in Samuel’s time everybody eyed David’s older brothers for kingdom leadership, but God looked on the inside, saw David’s heart and plucked him from anonymity. David was blessed with exceptional abilities, but to that point they had been used to take care of sheep in the Judean hillsides.

Many of our most important Old Testament characters were in the midst of “hard times” and “off-the-radar” when God drew them into assignments of kingdom importance; Moses was in the desert, Daniel in Babylon, Joseph in Egypt. In each case when God revealed their assignment it was something for which they were exquisitely prepared without KNOWING they were being prepared.

I’m thinking about these things because like some of you, I am in a period of transition, available for what God wants me to do, eager to do it but in a waiting mode because God has not yet revealed what is next.

Being a recovering type-A workaholic, I am driven to distraction by this uncertainty. I’ve explored a few possibilities that appear to be dead-ends. I’m very active (teaching, speaking, consulting, writing two books, serving on some strategic boards) but feel there is something else, a cohesive yet-to-be-revealed assignment.

I suspect God knows I am not yet ready for what He has for me. As a matter of fact I remarked to my daughter the other day that if toys come packaged with the message “some assembly required,” I came packaged with the message “some disassembly required.” I feel like God is taking me apart right now…humbling me, rearranging me and exposing to me some of my weaknesses and blind spots. This is what God does with everyone He loves and it is a prerequisite for usefulness in his kingdom. How many times are we told to “humble ourselves and not think more highly of ourselves than we ought?” Since few of us volunteer for humility God is kind enough to tailor and deliver it to us personally.

How does Psalm 131 fit in? In three short verses read the description of someone whittled down to size and rendered useful to God.

LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child. Let Israel hope in the LORD from henceforth and forever. (KJV).

Yours for the pursuit of God in the company of friends, Dick Staub.

PS. And remember, “these are the best of times and the worst of times, but they are the only times we have.” (For Now).

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