“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your strength.”
Deut. 6:5
Something that has been a great challenge for me living in this country and serving our Lord, has been taking the task oriented and ambitious
part of my personality and setting it before the Lord so that my need to see
things accomplished in order to feel successful and confident will not override
the greater need for me to find my identity and success solely in Him. My husband and I were talking with another
co-worker who asked us a really good question, “At the end of the day how do
you define success for yourself?” This
simple question spurred on more questions in my mind as I thought about success
in ministry, and that overseas. Where before
while working in the States in an office my checklist being done well was my
day’s success, I could not always have that accomplished feeling with the tasks
that have been laid before us through our calling over here. Building life impacting relationships cannot
be written on a task list, neither can decisions being made to follow Him or commitments
to walk in obedience be simply checked off a to-do list. Those are tasks for Him alone. We’ve been hosting some teams this summer and
so I was able to share with these teams a way to measure their own success,
which in turn was really His Spirit speaking deep into me. You measure your day’s success only by the
impact made in another’s life, not by if they made a decision to become a
believer or if they decide to be the next Paul.
If I wake up in the morning, yielded to the Lord to use me for the day,
and whoever it may be that He has in my life, a local, a group of locals, a
stranger, my spouse, or even a team mate that needs encouragement, then I have
fulfilled my responsibility of loving those around me well and have placed all
trust in Him to work in their hearts.
Success defined for me has become whether or not I allowed Him to use me
to impact others. So at the end of the
day I ask myself, “Who did I show His love to today?” Once putting words to those complex thoughts
in my head from that one simple question was done, lots of pressure and burden
was released from me. I know my struggle
of checking off a to-do list will surface again, but I will and must remind
myself that I am here for His glory and not my own. I am here to love others, to lead them to His
throne, to be a witness and an ambassador alone. The fruit of loving people well comes in His
timing and in His ways. The greatest
task that I can set my heart on, and the one I can definitely write on my to-do
list, is choosing to love Him with a greater love today than the day prior. And then allowing His love to compel me to
love others with the love He has filled me with each day.
