19 May 2011

Time to quit?

Today Bonnie gave us the following prompt:. 
To quit or not to quit. Share your thoughts or experience on quitting something or not quitting something.
This past year I struggled long and struggled hard. I needed to make a decision to step away from the leadership of intercessory prayer ministry, and also felt an insistant call to step away from a church body we have prayed for, worshipped in and fellowshipped with for the last ten years.

Words like failure, defeat and quitter banged about in my head.  Fears were multiplied by those who asked if I was stepping away due to offense, had I been hurt, did I think that I could find perfection somewhere else?  I spent long hours inquiring of the Lord, wanting to hear His voice and His voice only.  At the same time, in some misery, I continued life as usual, pressing in until I was certain I had heard the Lord's request.

I was hurting, confused, trying to keep everyone else happy, juggling too many balls in the air, striving in my own ability to understand and make things right.  If God was telling me one thing and everyone else was saying something else, could I be hearing wrong? 

God was saying "go" while I was expecting Him, like the people around me, to convince me to stay.  I believe I received His answer many times before I heard it clearly enough to act upon it.


If you shut the door to everything else - keep it open to Me and I will continue to enter.
I will show when to fling gates wide or crack them narrow. When you feel without wisdom, lean on Mine, for I see and I know.  Even in correction, I Am your place of safety.

When we hear a call, to submit, to surrender, to make the hardest of choices, will we listen and obey?  Lead me then, blessed Lord, in the way that I should go, even when in doing so I may leave those I've loved behind, to find in You my strength, the call to rise for the glory of Your name.

FaithBarista_FreshJamBadgeG


Jamming with Bonnie about quitting


linking as well with Emily and others who write broken and imperfect prose

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

juggling too many balls...
striving in my own ability...

definitely a need to give that to God and be freed.

Glynn said...

His is the voice we have to heed, regardless of what the crowd and everybody else might say. Good post, Karin.

Rachel said...

This is so good, the surrendering to Him.

I have had times when it was time to quit but I felt it was a lack of faith to quit when really it was a lack of obediance and surrender not to. It is a journey in relationship to know when to stand and when to move on.

Lindsey V said...

This is so encouraging. I wrestle with so many of the same feelings and emotions, and I appreciate your thoughts on how to work through and overcome them.

FaithBarista Bonnie said...

It is hard to make the decision to leave a ministry and a church body. Your prayer at the end reminded me with the passage I shared about faith - as long as you lean into Jesus, you cannot go wrong with faith. Not easy, but confidence God is leading you.