Trust Me.

It's Christmas Eve--Woohoo! :) Tonight was our church's Christmas Eve service and I got to sing O Holy Night with my mom. After coming home, God really began to teach me a lesson through tonight's performance.

After many many years of singing in front of people, you would think that my stage fright would have slowly gone away,

Nope. 

Any time I'm given the opportunity to sing, I get super nervous. My throat constricts, I start shaking, and my stomach hurts. This song happened to be in a higher key, so I was even more anxious because I had a 70% chance of majorly voice cracking, and that made me even more nervous. 

So of course, I start begging God to take away the nervousness and to strengthen me as I sing. So my mentality during our first service of singing is to hold the microphone as far away from my mouth as possible "just in case" I mess up-- Then, no one would really notice!  After the service, I didn't really feel like I did very well, and then like, 15 people came up to me saying they couldn't hear me and I was really quiet. A lot of people encouraged me to be confident and actually sing into the mic so people could hear. So, the second service I did. As I started to sing, I felt a strong peace come over me and I felt a deep assurance, and I felt a whole lot better about the second performance.

But, the real lesson I learned from this whole experience was that when God calls us to go out of our comfort zone, or ask us to do something that may entail us failing, our response should be to trust Him: trust that He'll help us succeed, trust that He has a purpose when we feel as if we failed, and trust that the outcome of whatever we're asked to do is in HIS control. To be honest, my instinct when He calls me to something  is to make a "detour plan" to where I can semi do what God is calling me to do, but do it to the minimum so that no one knows if I'm wrong, or if I fail.

 Tonight I learned that God cannot show is His strength in our weakness, if we refuse to ACT in faith, and take that first step. 

Imagine if Peter had never walked on the water with Jesus. 

Peter: Lord, if it's you, tell me to come out on the water!

Jesus: Come!

(Peter thinks, 'If I get out of this boat, I might sink and look like an idiot. I might fail.)

Peter: I trust you Jesus! But I'm gonna stay here in the boat!

The story just wouldn't be the same. Though Peter did sink shortly after He stepped out because of His fear, He still took that first step. 

Fear will always try to steal our attention and slowly plant seeds of lies that say God will not provide, protect or come thru on what He's promised. But, when we chose to uproot those lies, and instead listen to the faultless and powerful words of God, we will be the few to truly see His mighty power at work in us.

_____

"For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love and self discipline." 

-2 Timothy 1:7