Ministry for me comes with trials and I have yet to serve the Lord without them. So much so that I have been wrestling with myself about my ability to be all that God has called me to be. When I think about the things that I can do for Him, I believed that I would never even scratch the surface. So as my spirit man and flesh went back and forth, I found myself in a valley of uncertainty, accompanied with a mountain of unworthiness.
How many of us know that when our thoughts don’t match up with God’s will, our spirit bares the weight of that? To many times I have been guilty of this. To many times I have let my inabilities limit God’s abilities in my life. God has no limits, but our faith in what He can and will do in our life limits His ability to work in us and through us. It’s a never ending cycle that I am far too familiar with. God being the loving and caring father that He is, He will bring me the very thing I need to break the cycle.
The other day when I came home from Church I got a chance to talk to my brother Erik. What I admire most about him is the God given ability to speak on many levels of understanding. He is able to learn something and teach that to the ones around him in a way that God speaks to them. Well just from our 15 minute conversation, God ministered to my heart a much needed message.
I am a visual learner. Sometimes I need to see things to understand and my brother held up a tiny cup and said that when God plants a seed in us it begins to grow. We don’t see the growth taking place under the soil (which to me means eternally). We just wait. Sometimes when we don’t see growth we want to just stop there, but as soon as the seed is planted, growth begins whether we see it or not. Eventually we will see growth on the surface and may even produce fruit, but we only grow as deep as the pot lets us (or in our case tiny cup). We get complacent with were we are at, but spiritually we can only grow so far. He grabbed a bigger cup and placed it next to the tiny one and said “Sometime this is what God has for us, but were still in the tiny cup. When in reality our goal is to be planted in the ground next to a river of water producing more than we ever imagined.” (All for God’s glory)
My bother might not ever understand the impact a tiny cup made on me, but it ministered to my heart so deeply. I don’t know about you, but I want to be a tree planted by the river producing fruit for God’s glory! I don’t ever want to be okay with producing small amounts of fruit or getting comfortable in the small pot I started in. I want to grow. Sometimes, it’s the very pot we are planted in that stunts our growth. For me, my pot is my inabilities. It’s my fears of rejection, my fear of being vulnerable to other and my fear of never measuring up for all that God has called me to do.
To whoever is reading this, just know that as we grow in Christ and all that He has for us, we never want to be okay with staying where we are at. Our inabilities or as I like to call them “our pots” stunt our growth. Allowing us to only go so far. But it’s not our job to worry about the pot, we just need to grow with the Son and the living water. He will take us out and plant us in a bigger pot when the time is right. But never settle for the pot, set your sights on the river.
I will be honest with you, we are not capable of doing ANYTHING, ministry, growing, or even living how God has asked us to without Him. Our inabilities run deep, but our God has no limits. So I challenge you to allow God to let your grow in HIS ability to do greater things in and through us. Because it’s never been about the pot, it’s always been about the growth.
“Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in ME will do works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the father.”
John 14:12
Cynthia M. Benavides 