Right now my husband and I have a lot of goals. We would like to move across the country. We would like to save up a sizeable amount of money before doing so. We would like to go back to school. We would like to eventually (Read: eventually.) have children. And I personally would like to be able to write (or do some sort of creative thing) for a living. But right now, we are in the middle of saving. Teagan and I are in the middle of jobs that simply bring in a paycheck, and we are not yet back in school. We still have a lot of steps to take. And I, for a while there, had been making a major mistake.
I say had, because God was faithful to get a hold of me. I work at a bank in town, and I am able to work full time. This means health and other insurance benefits. My job is a huge blessing! But for a few months, I had begun to start despising this great blessing from God. You see, I enjoy doing many things in my free time. Reading, writing, drawing, painting, photography, and even cleaning (yes cleaning)! But I had not had a full time job before the one that I am holding right now, only part time employment. So the new major occupation of my time came as somewhat of a shock to me. There were many other things that I wanted to be doing, but for most of the day I was stuck pushing numbers on a computer at work. I quickly became discouraged.
"This is not what God made me to do", I rationalized, "I should be at home honing my abilities so that I can follow through and be good enough to make some money on what God has made me to do!" So I eventually stopped looking at my job as an amazing opportunity for someone my age, and started blowing it off ever so slightly. I would not put much effort into my work, making mistakes here and there. I would waste absurd amounts of time, playing on my phone, or simply working on something else. I would get behind on things that no one was checking, procrastinating until there was no point in even going back to it. I was squandering the amazing gift that I had prayed so earnestly for! I can only imagine how it looked to God who blessed me with something that I had asked for, only to see me treat it with such disdain.
But that is not the end of my story. As I slowly became worse and worse of an employee at work, I could feel the tugging of the Spirit on my heart growing stronger and stronger each day. I had immensely less peace. My days never felt right, and on my drives home, I was constantly convicted of not giving my all (or much of anything) at work. God knew that I was aware of what I was doing. He also knew that I was fully conscious of what I should have been doing, so he let me enter into a period of unrest- a season without peace and full of dissatisfaction and disappointment.
I thought the answer was to be rewarded with more time with which to do what I wanted, what God wanted me to be doing. If I could only quit my job, and devote all of my time to what I really love, then I would be at peace! I had it fixed in my mind that the end of this season was up to God. I would see the light when he would show me a way out of my job. But that was not what God had in mind. Because, while God did gift me with more than the ability to fill out forms and tasks around the office, he never meant for me to use that as an excuse to neglect the step in my life that was before me. I might in fact be able to quit my day job and spend my time on something more creative, but now was not that time. God gave me a job that most twenty-one year old, married women would love. He was waiting for me to be faithful to him right now, instead of waiting for the full realization of my purpose.
When January rolled around, I finally felt entirely fed up. I was tired of how I had been acting, and I was tired of looking at my life and not expecting God to change me. God gave me one simple task as an answer to a prayer asking to change my ways at work. In response to my self-imposed desperation, God gave me a way out. "Don't bring your cellphone into the office".
"Really God? I'm not that out of control. That's embarrassing! I'm not one of those people!", the solution seemed so extreme to me!
"Flee from temptation. Leave your phone in your car." God knew my heart of hearts. Even when I wouldn't admit it to myself, God still knew that I was absurdly distracted by my phone. He stuck with me, waited patiently for me to admit that I was making a mess of my work life, and kindly offered the solution. All it took for me to see a complete 360 turnaround of my work life was faith that God would bring me out of the mess I had created, and a step of obedience through that faith.
I immediately started to see a change. I began working on the projects I had neglected. I became faithful and reliable. And you might think that after getting use to wasting so much time, I would be bored from working without any breaks to pass the day by, but I was more invigorated and preoccupied than ever before. My days at work became far more rewarding and interesting. I have not been bored one day since choosing to be faithful to God in my work. God's abundant grace is not just for a ticket into heaven. By grace through faith we can walk in a life that honors God. I had been trapped by fear and laziness. Now, because of God, I am free.
And I'll tell you another thing. The list of things that I like to do? The writing, art, and photography? I have time for all of it now. After allowing God to reveal what I didn't want to admit, and submitting to what he truly desired for me, the time just opened up! It opened up because I had been lazy at work, and in reality, home was no different. I wanted to believe that if I quit my jobbed and devoted my time to what I wanted to do, that I would be able to thrive and get things done. But that would not have happened. God could see that I was not ready to manage my own day yet. I'm incredibly glad that I honored God instead of trying to follow my foolish psudo-understanding.
The steps on the path to what we feel that God has called us to do can feel useless and dry. I was under the impression that really coming alive for God in this season in my of life was unimportant. There seemed to be no need for me to go at life with vigor, because it was not what I felt that God had for me in the long run. And that is probably true. I plan on going back to school, and I don't intend to pursue banking. But that doesn't make this step in my life any less important, and less worthy of my entire being and obedience than the steps that I will take further along the path. No one jumps up a mountain. They climb foot by foot, inch by inch. By placing the mountain peek higher up in importance than the steps at the foundation, I had been dooming my ascent from the beginning.
One last thought. I had prayed, earnestly prayed for a full time job with a kind boss and good hours. I got so much more than that. God gave me what I had asked for and more, but I forgot why I had asked for it-where I had been before, and I became lax and mistreated that which God had given me. I honestly wonder sometimes if I had not stopped being so useless, how long it would have been until they fired me. I did work, don't get me wrong, but I had to be told several times by my boss not to camp out on my phone. Each time, she was very kind, and not at all demeaning. But she had to tell me none the less.
We mustn't forget what God has done to get us to the place we are now. Before my current job at the bank, I had been honestly hating my job. I did not appreciate the attitudes of my superiors, and I had thought many days after work about quitting. I was constantly undermined, walked over, and treated unfairly. In the midst of my comfort at my new job, I had forgotten where I had been, and why I left. God will bring us out of some nasty, unfair, uncomfortable situations. When he does, we should not feel the need to earn anything. We can never earn grace, it is freely given. But we should through faith walk as good stewards.
A steward is someone who who manages something. We are given our lives, and are stewards over them because we have free will. That means we can choose to burry our talents in the ground for fear of our Master, or we can be active, and make choices that will multiply what we were given rather than stifle the good we were blessed with. Ever part of our lives, even the most seemingly unimportant seasons deserve wholehearted devotion. Let us no longer snub the the time we are given, but instead go at it with a vigor and joy that can only be fully explained by our relationship with the Lord.
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