Opportunities

Before me lay numerous God-given opportunities.

• I get to be a wife and mother. My greatest dream come true. God did not give me the husband of my dreams. I never could have dreamed big enough to anticipate the perfection-for-me that is my husband. And my children – oh how amazing those three blessings are!

• I get to be in the ministry. I knew long before I met Doug that God was leading me to be a minister’s wife. How amazing to see that knowledge become reality.

• I get to teach. I teach my children, another dream come true. And I teach youth girls, a passion for me.

• I get to write. Not just here, where I freely write for my own pleasure and for those who choose to read. Other places, too.

Those four things are just a sample of the grand opportunities God places before me. Smaller details fit into each one, and more finite opportunities come and go. Each one represents an amazing blessing.

I frequently ruin that blessing. You see, God has laid those things before me, but not because I am so capable. He desires that I do them, but only in His strength. Without Him, my efforts fail. My results are average, if not poor. I fail as a wife and mother. I have nothing to offer in the ministry. I teach fluff. I stare at a blank page with no thoughts for writing.

As believers, God does not hand us an opportunity and then expect us to handle it from there. Instead, He gives it to us expecting that we will 1) acknowledge we have no capability of doing it on our own and 2) give it back to Him that He may simply use us as His vessels to accomplish His will.

I fail frequently on both accounts. I try to handle every opportunity myself. Then there are the opportunities that I turn down. Why? Because I am convinced I can’t handle them. So I walk away, ignoring the fact that God never intended for me to handle them in the first place.

Glorious opportunities will face each of us today. They may be incredible open doors, or they might be little things that seem almost insignificant. What will we do with those opportunities? Will we give them back to God and let Him complete them through us? Or will we fail because we try to do it on our own?