I Can't

Merry Christmas, everybody!
As our year draws to a close, I've been looking over what I've learned this year, both in school and in my Bible-reading room. It has been a lot!

At the beginning of this year, I was just about to start on my first semester in my program at college. I would be taking 14 credits that spanned over five classes. I knew I'd be busy and in school a lot, so I was worried. I thought I wouldn't have time to spend with God in the mornings, and I thought I wouldn't have the brain power to learn spiritual things while I was cramming in so much school information. God reassured me and told me that I didn't need to worry about learning from him. He'd let me off the hook in that department. That was pretty comforting to me.

But I think I either misunderstood, or he was testing me. Because the fact that I determined to focus on school and push God into the background was what started the misery that was to overshadow me during that semester. My life became infested with worry, fear, and a drive to gain perfection on my own. The weird part is, I spent twice as much time doing devotionals during that spring semester as I did this past fall semester. I think it was because I was trying to get in a whole day's worth of spiritual growth in an hour.

I already spent two blog posts talking about what happened that spring, and what changed over the summer. So I'm not going to go over it again. If you need a refresher, you can read my posts "Losing Perfection...Finding Peace"

So, now to the point of this post, and why I entitled it "I Can't."
I recently read a meme on Facebook that quoted some famous person I don't remember. He (or she) said something on the lines of, "Don't limit your dreaming to something you can do by yourself (i.e., without God's help)."And I realized that I had been doing just that. I am more likely to discard an idea without prayer if I think I can't do it. I sometimes look at things through the lens of "If God doesn't come through, at least I can do it without him." But that's not something we, as Christians, ought to do. We need to be willing to say "I can't, but I will anyway." God may well call us to do something we cannot do without him, like walk into an inferno without dying. And there's a good reason for him to do that. He's teaching us, especially me, to rely on him wholeheartedly. He doesn't want us to have any reason to put our trust in ourselves.

The world says the opposite. They say, sometimes literally, "Never say the words 'I can't.'" They teach you to pursue the highest dream imaginable, but understand your limits. Even before you can read, they're telling you the story of The Little Engine that Could. And sometimes, we get confused. Like I did this spring. I compromised without knowing it. I said, "I'll get God's help." But I never fully relied on him.

We pray for God to give us the strength to do what needs to be done. There is nothing wrong with doing that, but we need to be sure that we have the right motives when we're doing it. We need to be doing it from the perspective of "God needs to do this, not me" instead of "I need to do this, but I need a boost."

That's the black and white version of that prayer. However, I find that I'm most easily deceived in the grey area. Like "I need to do this, but I can't do it alone." My advice is this: Stay in the white area. Trust God. Don't be afraid to say, "I can't" and mean it. Then, when God asks you to do the impossible, you can relax, knowing that he will take care of you.

He's Always Been Faithful

Hi, everyone! Merry Christmas!
I have a couple of stories from this weekend about God's faithfulness that I wanted to share with the world. What better way of doing that than on the Internet?

The first one starts quite a ways back, in September. I started a new session at Celebration Ministry of Arts (CMA), and I volunteered to assist a class during an hour that I wasn't dancing. They put me with an older class because the teacher didn't expect to be able to fine-tune their dance during dress rehearsal, as she had a prior commitment. So they put me in that class to help out. God also told me to learn the dance really well just in case something happened to one of the dancers.

Well, something did. One of the dancers in that class dropped out just two weeks before the performance. And I was able to step in because God had told me to learn the dance really well.

But there was another problem. I was still supposed to be "cleaning" the dance at dress rehearsal. It would be the first time I'd ever done it before, and it's an extra challenge to clean a dance that you are in. So I was pretty nervous about that, but God told me not to worry, just trust him.

As it turned out, last Monday, the Monday before the performance, the teacher in that dance said that she would be able to make it to dress rehearsal after all, and she'd just be missing the performance. Tada! God solved the problem! Yay!

It was the first of many...

The next story starts on Friday, the morning of both dress rehearsal and performance. I was doing my devotional time, and praying extra hard for the performance, the audience, and the dancers. God told me that this performance was important, and therefore would be under extra attack. So I prayed earnestly against that, claiming the protection of the Holy Spirit. I distinctly remember asking that the auditorium would truly become a sanctuary. A place where people could come in, experience Jesus, open their hearts, and leave changed. I got the sense that even though we would be attacked, none of the attacks would prevail.

Dress rehearsal went really smoothly. I was responsible for supervising the class that I had been the assistant teacher for that semester. As I stated earlier, they were a little older, so when I was needed elsewhere I could trust them to behave themselves. They were released midway through the afternoon and told to return at least 45 minutes before the performance started.

To make a very long story short, here's a list of all the problems that were solved that night, some of them just in time:
-Me not having enough dinner. I had enough energy to last two dances and a finale, plus a lot of running
-One of the kids I was supervising was having some trouble breathing right after we got off stage. We found a friend who had an inhaler she could use.
-I finished a costume change literally less than five seconds before I had to be back on stage. It still went off without a hitch.
-Because I was busy with changing costumes, I didn't have time to get flags for the younger kids, who needed them as a part of the finale. One of my friends covered for me, and got the flags to them less than a minute before they needed them.
-I had enough energy to help clean up, pack up, and carry all the costumes, as well as my own stuff. Then I got home and collapsed with exhaustion, after being at the church for 12 1/2 hours.

Through all these instances, God proved faithful again and again. I never had to worry or panic, I just had to think on my feet a little.

However, the success of the performance is not the only great thing God did this weekend. Throughout November, I have, in addition to CMA and taking 15 college credits, been choreographing a dance for my church's Christmas Eve service. Not only has God given me the choreography for it, he also told me exactly who he wanted involved, and who he didn't want involved.

Well, that dance wasn't finished yet, just three weeks before Christmas. That's usually the time that you want to be wrapping things up, but we had only gotten through the first two verses and one chorus. I wanted to finish, but I also have school to think about. I'm about to take nine finals in the next week. Again, God told me to trust him, and I told the dancers that he would take care of it.

With all my school, and with CMA on top of it, I haven't had time to choreograph more... At least, not during the day...

So God decided that we would do it at night! Last night/this morning, God woke me up at 3:30am with the rest of the choreography for the dance. All of it! I spent an hour dancing in my head, and then in my room in the dark. And when it was time to teach it to the other dancers after church, I was able to remember everything!


So to conclude this post, Praise the Lord! He's always been faithful to me, and I know he always will be!