Keep Walking

A couple of nights ago I just wanted to quit.  I was tired.  I was hurting.  I felt like everything I did was not bearing fruit or working.  We all have those days.  Sometimes they last a day, sometimes a week, sometimes it feels like those feelings stay around vaguely in the back of our minds and corners of our hearts for long stretches at a time.

I knew God loved me.  He had just told me so.  I didn't doubt Him, His love or His care for me.  I just felt fruitless, failing and fumbling.  And so I sat on the couch when I got home for work and just wanted to quit.  What was the point of being a volunteer if I wasn't helping in the areas God placed me?  Was I making a difference?  Should I step back from what I was doing?  Am I really any good at it?

I lifted my eyes and across the room on the side table was a folded up piece of paper.  It looked like something that should be in the trash to me.   My first instinct was to get annoyed. I thought to myself, "great, just leave the garbage around for me to pick up."  And then I saw the words on this folded up piece of paper.  In big, bold capital letters were three words:  DON'T GIVE UP.

I don't think God could have been any clearer.  I have to laugh because one of my requests to the Lord is that I wish His answers came in big neon signs.  And I think this is about as close as I was going to get.  He's so funny.

And so today, I give His message to you, dear readers, "DON'T GIVE UP."  Stay on the course the Lord has set.  Fruit is in His timing.  And in His way.  Sometimes we don't see the results we want but that doesn't mean God is not in our tasks and not working things out for His purposes.

Oh, and that piece of paper, where did it come from you may ask?  A local church group had gone door to door today and left literature.  No one was home when they came so they just left it in the door, and my husband had folded it up and left it on the living room table.  Talk about not knowing that something you do or did was bearing fruit!  These faithful people may never know what a blessing their obedience to God was, but He knows.  And that is why God says, "DON'T GIVE UP!"

Lord, thank You.  Thank You for the "neon sign" answer that I really needed.   Thank You for the encouragement.  I pray that this helps someone else as well.  Help me and all of us to follow Your plan, even and especially when we walk in the dark, don't see results, feel like we are not good enough or making a difference.  Help us to walk in humility, kindness, love and obedience and leave the rest to You.

One foot in front of the other today!