I am a stubborn person. Always have been. When I was a kid, my mom would always tell me that being stubborn was a good thing...but only if I used it in the right way. She tried to explain what she meant, but for a long time, I just didn't get it. How could being stubborn ever be good if it was always getting me in trouble?
I'm not exactly sure how old I was when it clicked, but one day, I found I did understand what she meant. God made me stubborn. That's not a bad thing. Just so long as I use that stubbornness to follow God, and never waver from doing what's right, no matter what the pressures around me are. It's wrong to be stubborn to defy my parents (as I so often did), or to stubbornly refuse to admit I when was wrong (the main thing that caused all the issues when I was young).
Which brings me to part of what I was talking to a friend of mine about the other day. God gave us our personalities for a reason. He made us who we are. He didn't make a mistake when He gave me my stubborn streak, and He didn't make a mistake when He gave me a love of teaching. My personality traits can absolutely be used wrongly, as evidenced by the vast majority of the first nine years of my life, but that doesn't mean that those personality traits are wrong. As long as I use them to serve God instead of to defy Him.
The same is true of our gifts and desires. God made me a writer. He made me love music and stories. He made me to love history and to care about our American government. He made me with a desire to be an author, to be a teacher, to make a difference in America. And those desires in and of themselves aren't wrong. (Obviously desiring something inherently sinful as defined by God's word is wrong, but that isn't what I'm talking about here.)
If I write things that are contrary to God's law, then it's wrong. If I use music to dishonor Him, that's wrong. If I campaign for candidates who I know stand for things that are unbiblical, that's wrong.
But if I use those gifts, use those interests in a way that honors God and furthers His kingdom, then that's good.
And I think I've touched on this before, though I don't remember for sure or when that would have been, but not using those gifts and interests at all is also wrong. God didn't give us gifts and abilities and interests just so we could stuff them inside and not use them any more than He gave us these gifts and abilities and interests to use them against Him.
So to sum up, God made us all special and gave us the personalities and gifts and interests we have for a reason, so we shouldn't be ashamed of who God made us to be. We must just purpose to use the way God made us to serve Him in our own unique ways, not to sin against Him.
"Stubborn streak"....haha, isn't that the truth...I think we had that conversation at least 100 times before you got my point.
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Yup. And I came across this awesome quote in Survivor's Quest by Timothy Zahn today that's actually pretty relevant:
Delete"None of us gets to choose which talents and abilities we're born with. Our only choice is whether we take those gifts and use them to live and grow and serve, or whether we bury them in the ground and try to pretend they were never there."
Good stuff.
I agree. And I think God uniquely equips every believer for his or her specific mission field, and those mission fields take many, many different forms. I think it is a favorite tool of the enemy to convince believers that the only legitimate mission fields are the church (pastors) and foreign missionaries. When we focus solely on those areas, we let the enemy take a lot of ground in every other area of our culture. (I am not saying these mission fields aren't important, but that only those people equipped in those areas should serve there. The rest of us have mission fields that are just as legitimate.)
ReplyDeleteI am proud of you for identifying your mission fields...specifically writing/publishing books, teaching music, and working to get godly individuals elected into public office. :)