Commit to the Lord whatever you do,
and he will establish your plans. (Proverbs 16:3)
Remember when you were young and trying to figure out what you were good at? You joined a baseball or softball team to see if that was fun. You took on different types of projects in 4-H in the summer to see what you might be good and creative at. You joined the chess club or debate club as you got older, trying to figure out: – am I a strategic thinker? Do I like to argue the other side of an issue even if I don’t agree with it?
Or maybe you asked, “Can I shoot the ball in the hoop pretty easily?” Or “I can jump pretty high – maybe trying hurdles in track is the way to go?”
Whatever you tried, you pursued it or stopped it for probably two reasons: 1) you didn’t enjoy it, or 2) you weren’t very good at it.
Those two things often go together, but I know people who aren’t good at something they really love. And that’s okay – as long as the passion and the desire are there.
I read this story at our most recent Quarterly Business Meeting, and it illustrates the point I’m trying to make:
THE ARCHER – A PARABLE
There’s an old story about a man who’s walking around a farm, when he turns the corner of a barn to discover an archer doing target practice. There are five targets on the side of the barn, each of which has an arrow dead in the bull’s-eye.
The man turns to the archer and says, “Wow! That’s really impressive! You must have put in a lot of hours to get so good that you’ve hit every target dead-center. What’s your secret?”
The archer says nothing. Instead, he walks up to the barn, pulls each arrow out, drops each one into his quiver, and walks around to another side of the barn. That side has nothing on it—no targets at all, just a small door. The archer takes an arrow, aims for the door, and shoots. To the first man’s surprise, the archer misses the door by a wide margin.
But the archer doesn’t seem to be upset at what surely must be a humiliating moment for him. Instead, he picks up another arrow but also misses wide. Then another and another until all five arrows have completely missed the door, landing in random spots on the barn wall. Still not upset by this, the archer lays down the bow, walks over to the corner of the barn, picks up a small can of red paint and a paint brush, and proceeds to paint a bull’s-eye around each arrow.
(from Small Church Essentials by Karl Vaters)
When you became a believer, God gave you a spiritual gift. It may have changed as you’ve grown and matured or it may not have. Either way, that gift is something he wanted you to use to glorify him. And that gift is also something you are passionate about. Those two things cannot be separated.
That doesn’t mean the gift is always easy – one of mine is discernment, and I’ve been through seasons at churches where being a prophetic voice, discerning what is of God and what is not, was really lonely.
It was also something I was compelled to do. I couldn’t not do it. It was as if it was in my DNA.
That’s how God works. When King Solomon wrote, “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans,” he was acknowledging that God is the one creates the plans and that whatever you feel so strongly about is something you are to commit to the Lord.
And yet, at times, it’s like the archer shooting the arrow ending up in many places. But remember – he was always aiming at the same thing.
When our aim is to the Lord, we might land in a couple of different places – maybe running the nursery, helping make crafts for Light Up Thomaston, being part of a committee that makes decisions about the work that needs to be done on our church building – but the aim should always the same: God.
What arrows are you shooting right now? And are they committed to God or someone or something else?
In Christ, Pastor Stephanie
