I've done a lot of thinking about my adult life in the last few weeks. Many is the time I have despaired, feeling that my life has meandered with no rhyme or reason. I have had numerous interests that I have dabbled in to one extent or another but then my involvement dropped off. I have a number of talents and abilities but none have ever come to the forefront as a passion. My jobs have mostly been underwhelming in terms of satisfaction.
This all used to bother me greatly. "Why am I here? Why am I still on this earth?" I just felt like I was putting in time waiting to die. I wasn't suicidal, I just felt like I wasn't acheiving anything.
That is very hard in western culture. If you are not achieving or producing you are worthless. This thinking is even found in church. If I had a nickel for every appeal for volunteers I have heard, every admonition to "find your gift and use it", I would be rich.
Most of my adult life has felt like sitting in a chair. I have had chances to serve and do good with the talents and opportunities God has given me but I have never felt like I found a passion that has stuck with me. I yearn to find a ministry for God that uses the abilities I have, something I can get excited about.
But over the last 15 years I feel like doors have been resolutely shut on me. I have had some incidents of service but nothing along the lines of a significant ministry. This has bothered me because I have this deep sense that I am pleasing to God only when I am working for Him.
I think the "hemming in" that I have experienced over the years has actually been God's design. My belief that He saved me to get work out of me is wrong and is something that He wants to purge me of. So He has shut doors on me. Not because He thinks I'm incapable but because He has something better for me. Serving God is good but knowing God is best.
I have certainly had time to get to know God. This past year has been one where I've been literally shut up with Him. I moved into an apartment by myself last spring and stopped the ballroom dancing which had taken up so much of my time. I have had wonderful times of worship and painful times of discipline. It has not been a picnic. He has exposed garbage in my soul and exercised me again and again in the act of self-mortification. Submission to God is the hardest thing about being a Christian. The rebelliousness in me runs so deep - it's a constant struggle to master it.
As I look back over the years, what seemed to be fruitless wandering has actually turned out to be carefully orchestrated progress. I don't know what God has for me next but I know now, finally, that what has passed has not been in vain. I am sure that, as He has guided me in the past, so He will guide me in the future.
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