Beautiful class and what I learned

What I am about to share isn't what you'd imagine would be the biggest thing I take away from this class, but I feel like the whole "lacking nothing" thing has impacted us each in such vastly different way.  It's given me confidence and hopefully eventually will lead to loving boldness.  

I felt messy.   Especially before sharing the letter to my 15 year old self and talking it all out, which was the hardest thing I've ever done.   I just felt completely inept and messed up, I very much connected with the line in the song Beautiful Things:

All this pain I wonder if I’ll ever find my way I wonder if my life could really change at all All this earth Could all that is lost ever be found Could a garden come up from this ground at all

In other words, can God use this body that i've defiled so much and this mind that is so messed up?  But like Jen told me in the pick up line at school, "honey, we're all messed up."  I knew that, but when she said it, it softened something within me.  And I'm sorry that your mess has made me feel better, but it has.  Knowing we're all a little…or a lot messy, makes me feel like God can use this ground.  

Something unexpected this class has taught me has been about finding my purpose and living it…on purpose.  Do it afraid, just start.  Don't become stagnant, trying to get the best start possible, that's a trick of the enemy to stop you.  He hates momentum.  Even if that momentum is taking you slightly off course, it's easier to turn around running that it is to start from a stopped position.  What will stop momentum? Thinking you don't have all you need and that you aren't good enough.  

I've been thinking  about my first Pastor and his story.  He stuttered, and as the asst. pastor to a church, it didn't matter too much, but when he was called to LEAD the congregation, a stutter would have been a great reason to think he'd heard wrong.  Preaching as a living was not his purpose. (I hope I have that story right)

But as soon as he began to walk in his purpose, leading the church WITH the stutter, the stutter went away. He just began DOING IT.  With this type of thinking, it should feel so good when we get that urge to do something and we know it's from God.  Instead, I get nervous I'll fail Him, when He doesn't care about all that, He just wants me to start because He can see the potential within me and even more than that, who I can show Him to.  Even with this knowledge, i haven't yet moved.  I'm really good at having revelations, just not so good at living them out.  

 I was thinking that, I don't feel that God gave him that stutter so that he would later have this testimony.  It's a good testimony, and surely one of the things that He works together to make it all good, but sometimes the testimony isn't what we should strive for.  I think the stutter is a product of this messy, unclean world in which we live.  Everyone has an issue to hold them back.  Period.  His purpose has always been fixed, all the things that hold us back have not been.  

We need to take our natural..or supernatural talents and USE THEM!  If we feel called to do something and it's so obviously our purpose, start doing it.  In any capacity you can.  

Whatever the passion is in our lives, it's on purpose.  We need to get out of the mindset that if we like it, it can't be what God has for us.  Christianity doesn't always have to be a martyr experience where if it hurts, you're doing it right.  Is it like that sometimes?  YES!!!!  But that's not necessarily the norm.  God knows you have a passion for whatever it is because HE PUT IT THERE.  God takes what you feel led to anyway, to fulfill what He needs…b/c He loves you.  Most of the time, He wants us to love what we are already doing because He knows the outcome of that type of living, he just wants to take our passion and use it for His kingdom.

That's what I've most gotten out of this class.  I LACK NOTHING, so if I'm called to do something, and especially if it's obvious, I NEED TO DO IT and am fully ABLE to do it, in Him!  

ONLY THEN, will the things that hold me back fall away.  Example:  If Pastor Chuck had NOT been called to preach and tried to do it anyway, the stutter wouldn't have fallen away.  But because that was his given purpose, the stutter became irrelevant.  If he had done it the other way, the message would have been irrelevant.   The point of it all:  When you do what you're called to do, the things that hold you back become irrelevant.  They don't even matter, God only needs our obedience in order for us to walk His perfect path and to be His hands and feet.