I Will Give You The Words

Hello friends. It has been awhile since I have posted. I hope all of you have had a good summer. My family and I enjoyed a great vacation at the beach. The other board members have enjoyed great vacation time with their families too. There have been two weddings in our board families this summer! The son of Diane Blattner, our president, got married in August. Also, Karen Kennedy's daughter got married in June. Even though we have been celebrating and enjoying family time this summer, we still have been hard at work for our partners in Nigeria. We have a lot that we will be reporting to you. One thing I want to mention now is that the Nativity Nigeria team from The Church of Nativity arrived home safely. They had a very successful mission trip. Read about the details here. I will be posting about one of the projects that we partnered with them in the next blog.

For now I want to share with you how grateful I am to be having this relationship with you, my readers. It is an honor to be able to help in any way I can for the Hope for West Africa Foundation and those of you I met while I was a missionary in Nigeria. I do feel called and yet I have struggled with this. I came across some notes today that I took after reading a really good article a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to share it with you. The article was on introverted leaders in church by a Pastor who by his own admission is an introvert. The question was posed can an introvert be a good leader? This Pastor had long doubted his abilities as a leader. It just seemed SO hard and SO much work for him to do the part of his job that was relational.

But he makes a great point. Just because part of his work was or did not come "naturally" to him did not mean that he was not a good fit for it. He is convinced that calling, not personality type, is the determinative factor in the formation and longevity of a leader. He had always felt the calling to be a Pastor. There was the stirring in his heart and a passion to do this for God. He says God may call some people into work for which THEY ARE NOT PERFECTLY SUITED, for HIS GREATER GLORY. WOW! This really made me pause today. How true is this? Because this is such powerful testimony to God. A person's life becomes a living testimony to God not by being righteous but by being changed because you have to lean into God. Just like when you know a Pastor is shy but he gets up in front of thousands of people every weekend and gives a powerful message and he does not seem shy for a second. This is when it is obvious that people are laboring in the power of God. Sometimes we question God even though we feel called just because it seems hard. I have questioned whether I should be blogging or not because the words do not always come easily. I have always enjoyed writing but I have no experience at professional writing.

The Pastor reminds us when he calls us he is not saying to do it alone. He refers to Moses and the burning bush. Moses did not want to say yes. Moses thought he was a clumsy speaker. The Lord did not disagree telling Moses he was a wonderful speaker who inspired him. He said, "I will be your mouth and teach you what you are to speak. I will be with you. I will give you the words."

It is God's power not self power that helps us minister to others.