Letting go

When I was Atlanta, one of the booths I stopped at in the convention center gave me a copy of Jeremy Camp's book, I Still Believe. I was struggling with some stuff last night and saw the book as I was looking for something else, and decided to start reading it. Jeremy's life is a powerful story. The first part of the book is about his childhood and then his first wife Melissa who died not long after they got married from a quick and severe form of cancer. Then the book goes into Jeremy's life after Melissa's death, the grief and how he processed it, and his music career taking off, and also meeting his second wife Adie. But the part that struck me is after all of this happens, and Jeremy is writing about control in ministry. It is a danger of being in ministry - when the work you are doing is a product of faith, it can become more about the work than about the Lord. I think I did that. I think I got to the point where I was doing the work for the Lord, rather than the Lord doing the work through me. And that's why I am feeling so blah about things at the moment.

Jeremy quotes Jeremiah 29:13 "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." The thing is, when your faith is also your work it's hard to make the distinction between them. And seeking God often becomes secondary to doing what needs done. I need to seek God with my whole heart.

The other thing that really struck me in what Jeremy is saying was this,

"Many times, I have found that letting go is an essential part of finding the freedom we crave. Sometimes when we're crying out, 'God, help me!' His answer might be, 'I want to help you, but you've got to let go first.' It's up to us to let go of control, to let go of a misplaced desire, to let go of a person we have placed on a pedestal - whatever it is, we need to lay it down at the feet of Jesus in order to create space in our lives for Him to come in and bring healing." (Jeremy Camp)

I need to let go of control and of the vision I have for the youth ministry of SUMC. I need to seek God with my whole heart and seek his vision, and the rest will fall into place. Letting go is never easy, but with God all things are possible. Here goes nothing...

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