How Big Assignments Can Leave You Feeling Small

I want this prominent place to serve God until I don’t.

Sometimes you get called to the messy job you never asked for. Times when the job you got just feels incredibly too much for you to handle.

Some days you want to trade your bigger-than-life assignment in for something a little less challenging or take back that prayer you prayed to get it.

Other days if you are going honest, you just want to quit the job you got and don’t do any job at all. Anybody?

I’ve spent some time lately trying to talk God into a different assignment. Days when this whole caregiver job makes me feel that I am in way over my head. I’m sure you have had one of those assignments in your life too. Maybe you are like me and are knee-deep in it now.

Days when I have treated myself a lot like Jessie treated David. I fail to see the potential in myself to do hard things. I just want to keep myself out in the green pastures tending some fluffy white sheep and playing the harp. An assignment that may be less exciting but looks like it is a lot less demanding.

 

But here is the deal…

 

We can settle for easy and less challenging, but we would miss out on some extraordinary rewards and benefits.

God builds character in the less-than-perfect places. He strengthens our spiritual muscles through some resistance, not from soft music playing. And the big open road of uncertainty will develop your faith faster than sitting around with your life all tired up in a perfect bow. In the less than we planned, God equips us for the calling too big for us to think up for ourselves.

Instagram and Facebook feeds can be deceiving when things are not quite as they appear. But, despite the lie the enemy will try to get you to believe, no life is perfect, not even “hers.”

I am sure that the pasture field has its share of problems, too, like fighting off wild animals from time to time. I’m sure many of you reading this post find yourself serving in the smelly unglamorous fields will agree. Plus, those days that are less glamorous and mundane seem to stretch on forever and can try your patience like nobody’s business.

And I know from experience that being the person responsible day in and day out for another life on this earth can play on your mind. That those kinds of assignments are back-breaking work that will pull on every string of your heart as well. All you moms out there, I am sure you will be quick to agree.

We serve a great Big God with great big dreams and purpose for each of us. But, unfortunately, we can lose sight of them when our own plans get in the view of seeing His.

I can tell you from experience is that your God assignment won’t have anything to do with anyone else’s thoughts about you. They won’t even have anything to do with your thoughts about yourself.

It will have nothing to do with how much strength you think you have or how much strength you just flat out don’t have either.

God will give you the job that He tailor-made for you, not the one someone else planned out. Not even if that someone else is “you” doing all the planning.

You have a Heavenly Father who has big plans for your life. More extensive than you can imagine. More significant than you can dream. And He will equip you to get the job done despite the days you just feel like you can’t.

 

Here is where Jessie comes in again…

 

Jessie planned out David’s life to settle in the role of a sheep-tending shepherd boy and didn’t care to see his full potential for anything else. So David would have never stepped out of his comfortable and familiar except for driving the food truck to his warrior brothers, except His Heavenly Father had other plans.

God saw potential in David and didn’t dare leave him sitting in his purpose and not tap into it.

God had plans involving David that went far beyond the fence gate and pasture land.

God trained the hands that tended to sheep to handle bow and shield in battle.

He trained the hands that played the harp to hold the scepter and lay hold to the crown.

He trained the hands that were tender with sheep to rule a nation.

He trained a shepherd boy to rule as King.

Did you get that? God trained him. It didn’t come from David. God’s assignments come from God. All of it. Including the know-how and the ability to get the job done.

So friend, if you are like me and from time to time just long for an easier life, take comfort in the fact with every different path you walk, there will be better days ahead.

The job you have now will never be permanent because you will always be training for the one to come. God just rolls like that.

And sometimes, sweet friend, you will be planting the very reward you will be reaping in the days to come.

Hebrews 11:6 (KJV) reminds us on the hard days that, “But without faith, it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

Did you get that? He rewards those that seek for and trusts in His plans and not their own. He rewards that person who dares to follow where He leads and plants in the fields God has placed them in. And He also rewards the person who holds on with all their might to walk the road of obedience. Every. Single. Time.

And just for the record, on the days when your faith is small or seems nonexistent, crying out that prayer “Lord, I believe but help my unbelief” works. That honest prayer never cancels out the rewards because saying it out loud to God is faith in itself. It is that tiny mustard seed we read about in scripture that gets watered by your tears and wrapped in the good soil of mercy and grace that will spring up right before your eyes.

So dare to ask for your God assignment. Pray that big prayer for a prominent place to serve. Pray for the ability to remain obedient in whatever field He places you in, big or small. Pray for God to grant you contentment in the middle when you spend your time in your sheep fields tending to other people’s assignments waiting for yours to take off.

It may never be easy and maybe a little messy, but we have God’s extraordinary promise it will be worth it. And today, dear friend, it will be enough.

See you in the field of obedience,

Susan