Bring the Rain

"So I pray
Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there'll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that's what it takes to praise you
Then Jesus bring the rain."

This song is becoming yet another of my many anthems, I guess. I just love it. I hope that I have that kind of heart. And obviously, none of us wants God to bring the rain, but we know that life in general brings rain, and so I hope that this is my attitude -- Rain is inevitable, but it's a chance to bring God glory, and if that's what it takes, so be it.

I guess the experiences of the past summer, and not even the summer, but the past couple of years, have cemented in my mind a couple of facts.

1.) God DOES have a plan (Even when we can't fathom what it could POSSIBLY be)
2.) God WILL be glorified, no matter the outcome.

I felt for a long time like this summer's events were a complete and utter failure, and I wrestled for a long time with the HEAD knowledge that God will be glorified without being able to reconcile it in my heart. For a long time, I just didn't understand how God could be glorified in the situations that have unfolded, but I realized a couple more things.

1.) God will (hopefully) be glorified in MY life.

If I am giving God the glory, and if I am keeping my eyes on Him, then God IS being glorified, even in the midst of the storm, through me.

2.) Things are only just beginning, not the end. God will STILL be glorified.

It's sort of like "Things will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end!" We KNOW who wins in the end, and that's all we need to know.

And I've struggled for a while with what I'm supposed to do. Yet another struggle of mine has been the fact that I feel like I somehow personally failed. I feel in some ways I let my classmates down. That's probably the biggest one, but it's among others. I just feel that things have backfired so horribly that the whole dang thing is just a failure! But once again, God will be glorified in MY life, and I"m also realizing something else.

I realized that maybe my ministry in Wibaux is done. I don't know. Maybe not. If God sends me back to Wibaux, I will go. Albeit, not happily. But at least for this particular moment, my ministry is HERE, in Dickinson, and I Need to just grow where God has planted me, so to speak. I've been resting in the assurance that I am where God wants me, but I haven't been RESTING in it, you know? I've still been looking back, sort of. But I realized that maybe my experiences aren't so much to make a change in Wibaux (although I still hope and pray that it will yet bring a revival there) but maybe more that the whole thing is supposed to effect lives through the STORY, rather than the actual experience.

I guess what I'm saying is that what God's been putting on my heart is that even though for me, at this point, the experience seems over, it's not like it's no longer useful because I'm not there effecting it now. But maybe I'm supposed to use those experiences where I am. I'm hoping that God gave me these experiences so that someone else can relate to me.

It's given me answers to some of the hard questions, and it's given me an answer to give when people ask "Why do you believe what you believe?" "How do you know God exists?" It used to be I couldn't REALLY answer those. Not solidly. Not in a way that someone else would really believe. But now I can, because it's right there in my testimony. THIS is why I believe what I believe. THIS is how I know God exists, THIS is why I'm sure He cares and why I am absolutely 110% positive He has a plan for literally EVERYTHING.

And I realized, too, that I've sort of been hording my gifts and my stories. God's been putting it on my heart for a couple weeks that my ministry at this point is through my story and my music, and so I think I'm going to get a chance to share my testimony and hopefully do some praise team for church and stuff, too. =]

We talked about having a servant's heart, like I said in my last blog, and I realized that I'm always happiest when I'm serving someone else, and so I need to be using what I've been given...

This turned out to be a novel and it's probably hard to read and all over the place because I was having a hard time putting things into words, but I guess that's all for now. =]

xoxo,
Erika Rose