Never Rich Until I Became Poor

There are Godly world changers doing great exploits. Some so great you can hardly believe it without seeing it! When you're not at that place it seems like a painful, scary journey. It seems like a place you'd never want to go. Yet you're being drawn there!

When you love Jesus it takes you where you could never get to on your own: Dealing with childhood memories, insurmountable fear, healing your sicknesses, assurance of salvation. As we pursue a relationship with Jesus, somewhere in the midst the love grows and spills out of you and you begin to help, heal and assure others.

If you take the time to contemplate where you came from and where you are now in this journey, it was only scary at the time, now the fears seem almost funny. I remember a time when I would start to get a word from God to share during a church service. I had to know the whole thing, I had to write it out word for word. then I would wait to see if something in the service lined up. The whole time my heart would race, stomach in knots, throat constricted. If! all those things were in place and the opportunity came, I would cry through the whole thing.
Now I'll get a sentence or a picture, I'll ask a couple questions like: do I share? Anything else I need to know? I wait for the opportune time, and then I open my mouth.

How did I get there? I can't even say exactly! I believe the key was that I kept pursuing relationship with Jesus, he increased, and I decreased; pushing out my fears and insecurities. I don't say this pridefully, but with great humility knowing that my only part is love for Jesus and willingness to trust him. Without him I am nothing.

"It is not a question of our equipment but of our poverty, not of what we bring with us, but of what God puts into us; not a question of natural virtues of strength of character, knowledge, and experience-all that is of no avail in these matters. The only thing that avails is that we are taken up into the big compelling of God and made His comrades." Oswald Chambers

"Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not —to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption." 1 Corinthians 1:26-30