Day 68: Limitation

Hello!

Happy Memorial Day!

...I have a lot of venting to do, but I promise it's leading to a point...

This week has been crazy trying to secure a location for our church services. Thankfully, the National Park Service expedited our campground amphitheater permit request and helped us secure a place for our summer services. This was an enormous blessing to us, but it required a lot of time preparing for our first service, particularly spreading advertising for the services both Friday and Saturday evening.

In the midst of this, we've encountered a couple limitations in the forms of advertising we're allowed to do. In this location, we are not allowed to go "campground calling", where our team walks the campground informing park visitors of the weekend activities of the resort (it is how we are allowed to inform people of our Sunday worship service). In addition to this, we are not able to advertise our services through posters or notices in public spaces either. I have worked in two other national parks where we had similar situations. In such a situation, we're allowed to put signs up in designated employee areas--in informing the staff about our services, inquiring guests can hear about these services, along with offering these services to the employees as well.

In the midst of this, my weekend was complicated with a lack of Internet. As more employees are arriving, access to Internet is also diminishing. I haven't had an Internet signal since Thursday night in the park...I'm making this post at the Safeway Starbucks in town.

After a long day of work on Friday and running around the resort putting up advertising for the services, I was spent; yet I could not readily fall asleep because my mind was racing and the full moon shone beckoned me to spend time outdoors walking. As I walked in the lunar illumination, all my frustrations, fears, doubts, and struggles started pouring out in prayer. Though everything turned out well for the ministry team and for the week in general, I was overwhelmed by voices of failure and discouragement--everything this week seemed to come only through struggle and forcing ends to meet. I prayed that God would show me a way in the midst of my struggling week.

When I awoke the next morning, my discouragement was turning into despair; my daily devotions was met with voices criticizing the verses I read, stripping them of the promises they held for me. It was here that I recognized that this despair was not my own; I wanted to trust God and believe His promise, but was lacking in strength. As I prayed for hope, I began to flip the pages of my Bible to my daily reading, and immediately the pages opened to Jeremiah 29:11: "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord; 'plans to prosper you and give you a hope and a future. Then you will search for Me and find Me.'"This was a moment that filled me with affirmation of God's plan in all of this struggle--that I can trust that in the mist of my frustration He is doing a work here at the resort that I don't yet see.

Sunday turned out well spent. KelLee and I held our first service at the campground amphitheater with three others joining--two other employees and one local. I was thrilled that even with such little advertising and short notice, we were still able to launch the summer's services with a good start.

This morning, I again opened up my Bible and continued my regular Bible reading; I'm currently reading through the Gospel of Mark. Here, Jesus returned to His hometown of Nazareth where the locals rejected Jesus' ministering--they were too familiar with Jesus as a local boy and the "illegitimate child" of Mary. They couldn't really see him as anything else, and therefore Jesus wasn't able to minister much to them. The passage finishes by saying that Jesus couldn't do much because of their unbelief. Here's a great example of the phrase, "Familiarity breeds contempt". In pondering the passage, wondering if I would be one of the ones who would limit Jesus because I was too familiar with who I expected Jesus to be that I wasn't able to see Him as anything more.

While pondering this, the question was reversed: am I too familiar with my own self--my own struggles, doubts, fears, past, and limitations--that I don't believe God can do anything more in my life than what I deem myself capable of doing? Do I limit God ministering through me because I don't believe He can do more than I can physically and willfully muster? If I release my expectations of my own self and what I think I am personally capable of accomplishing...maybe I can release God to do so much more through me.

This has been a shot of hope to me today. I wanted to pass this along with a prayer that each of us can take God's promise, "Call upon Me and I will show you great and mighty things you do not know" (Jeremiah 33:3).

A recording of this Sunday's sermon at the campground is available on my Summer Sermons page.
Due to the amount of preparation this week required for Sunday's service, I wasn't able to get any new photos for the week. Sorry.

Enjoy your week!