God put it on my heart to open my journal and look at where I was this time last year.
I found a prayer I’d written from February 2020:
“Lord, I am terrified of my future… who I will be. I don’t want to let You or the people in my life down. Keep me strong and trusting of Your plan because it seems so unclear. Thank you for giving me a passion for service. Help me to follow wherever You lead me, even if it is not in missions. I just don’t want to waste this life, and I pray you will take away this constant worry over my future. I also know that so many people are where I am right now, and I hope you give them peace. Thank you in advance for providing me the means needed to fulfill your calling on my life. Help me to be there for people who are struggling to find their purpose. Let me trust you, change my heart.”
I am sitting here a year later in awe of His faithfulness. He has answered this prayer in so many more ways than I could have imagined. My fears of the future still remain, but He has given me the opportunity to live out a dream I’ve had for years. With this changing season, I will admit there has been this new unattainable pressure I’ve put on myself; every time I mess up, I struggle with feelings that I am not qualified enough to share the gospel. This new struggle I’m facing shows just how easy it is to doubt the depths of God’s grace. It is not about how many times I fall short, but it is about how good He is and who He has called me to be. Consistently focusing on my inabilities takes away from how He will use me to further His kingdom.
2 Corinthians 12: 9-10 “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
My prayer for anyone reading this is that God will remind you of His plan for you, that He has put a purpose on your life according to who He has made you to be. And I ask you to pray that throughout this process, God will give me the words to say and the guidance to make this upcoming year honoring to His calling on my life.
