SO LORD, WHAT'S YOUR NEXT ASSIGNMENT?

Are you a goal setter?  I’ve never been good at setting goals for myself.  For me, it’s like making a New Year’s resolution.  I spend hours writing them, I diligently record them so I can check my progress and then, within a couple of weeks, I’ve abandoned most of them. When it comes to spiritual goals, I do have some, and have carried them out with varying degrees of success.  On the top of my list is “to be more consistent with my Bible reading/study and prayer time”.  

Since the Lord created me with a quiet, contemplative nature, I prefer to do this in solitude, not easy when you live with four other active people, but I try.  At various times over the years, I’ve sought out and used a number of quiet spots.  I’ve retreated to the library’s quiet study room, and then prayed as I walked around the sports track behind the building.  I’ve gone to our local pool in the off season, and sat in the sun.  I’ve gone to the beach, to a park, to what once was our spare bedroom (but is now occupied), to the church, to a coffee shop, even to a hotel, and probably other spots I can’t remember now.  Those times with the Lord bring a soothing calm to my soul, ushering me directly into His presence and enabling me to enjoy Him and the love we share.  And it's in those quiet times that the Lord begins to speak to my heart.

One of the areas in which I try not to have any goals or expectations, right, or wrong as some might see it, is when it comes to serving the Lord.  There, I prefer to let the Lord take the lead.  I guess some might look at the lack of goal setting as a way of avoiding having to make decisions, out of fear or a desire not to take responsibility.  If that were the case, I should have done my own choosing because I know I would have been easier on myself!   The Lord has never failed to provide plenty of assignments. Many of them have surprised and sometimes terrified me because they have taken me way outside my personal and “professional” comfort zone.  They have also been the means the Lord has used to grow and stretch me and teach me to depend on Him.

Preferring to fade into the background, I never would have chosen leadership of any kind.  I certainly would have avoided speaking before an audience of any size.  I never would have sought out assignments that required me to train others, find leaders, lead other people in prayer, work with teens, teach junior high Sunday school, or serve on a committee that included men.  (Working with men has always intimidated me.)  Yet, when I’ve let the Lord choose, He has led me into all of those things.

This time of the year for me is like New Year’s resolution time – without the resolutions.  Ministry assignments undertaken last year through the leading of the Holy Spirit have been completed.  During the summer when church ministry slows down, I want to “delight in the Lord” so that He can “give me the desires of my heart”, desires that are consistent with His will for me in the coming ministry year.  

The early September morning I was asked to pray about teaching 4^th and 5^th grade Sunday school it was easy to say yes, because I had already been praying for the Lord’s will and I knew that this was it.  Teaching Sunday school became His assignment for the next two years, until the Lord began to burden my heart for women’s ministry and then opened a door to a new assignment providing opportunities for women to grow in their relationship with the Lord.  Last spring our women’s ministry team members all went on to other assignments and so during the summer I began praying again for the Lord’s direction.  When both our youth leaders left in August, women’s ministry was temporarily put on hold as God’s new assignment was to teach junior high Sunday school and work with the senior high ministry.  Now that we’ve hired a new youth director, I’m wondering what next year’s assignment will be.  

Until the Lord shows me, my summer “assignment” is to keep on seeking the Lord, drawing close, spending time enjoying Him, and waiting with anticipation the planting of His desires in my heart.  I don’t know what lies ahead in terms of ministry for the next church year – but I do know it will be exciting and stretching, both personally and “professionally”, and it will come as a direct invitation from the Lord, as Henry Blackaby says, to join Him in the work He is already doing in His kingdom.