It's Not About Me

3:20 AM...It's either really early, or really late depending on your frame of reference.  Well, for those of you who don't know me yet, that is the time that my alarm goes off every morning during the week.  See, I work at The Home Depot stocking shelves and my shift runs from 4 AM to 8 AM.  I usually don't have many coherent thoughts during my morning routine, but today I as I drove to work, with my radio blasting David Crowder singing "The Doxology" (Passion: Hymns Ancient & Modern), I had two thoughts. (1) 11:45 is much better than 3:20 and (2) "Praise God from whom all blessings flow."

Now you may not see many blessings in having to be at work at 4 AM each morning, but for me that is a huge blessing.  A little background on me will help clear this up.  January 2007:  I had just graduated from Seminary and was looking forward to moving to a full-time position at the church I was at in Pasadena, CA.  Lori and I had attended this church the whole time we had lived in Cali (since Fall 2003).  I had also done all of my Internship work at the church (about a year and a half).  But God had other plans.  I was laid-off and all of my plans were shattered.  I started looking for a job and learning a lot about the business side of church.  Lori and I became very discouraged.  But then things started to look up because I got plugged in with a church in Columbia, SC that was looking to improve on its existing "contemporary" service.  I worked part-time for them from California planning services and emailing the sets in each week.  At the end of October I packed up the apartment, said goodbye to Lori and got on a plane for SC to live with my in-laws.  Lori was finishing up her Masters at Southern Cal and I was coming to SC to start my first full-time ministry job after seminary.  But that job only lasted 4 days.

Once again, my plans were shattered but God had other plans for me.  Before long I was eating lunch with a family member who leads worship at a church in Charlotte and he mentioned to me that a church in Rock Hill was looking for a worship leader to help out.  About the same time, a position came open at The Home Depot across the street from my in-laws sub-division.

All along this journey of the past 16 months, God has been telling me "It's not about you...It's about me."  And His blessing have flowed in some amazing ways.  I am really looking forward to all that God is going to do in this 11:45 service.  But we need to remember that even though we are going to do a lot of "work" to get this service up and running, God is ultimately the one who is going to make the service happen.

In the meantime, I'll keep praising God for that 3:20 alarm.

Will