Well Done...

Psalm 37:4 (ESV)

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Good morning Zebras,

I want to thank you for all the prayers. The Reno conference went really well and I even had a fun God story to share. Since Reno was the last conference for the year, my prayer was that I would finish strong.  I wanted to know I had done well and not have nagging doubts I should’ve said something differently. 

The way conference works is the missionary assigns each of us a room that he thinks will accommodate the people who want to come and hear the workshop.  He also provides what he believes to be adequate seating.  Sometimes they underestimate people’s interest in the topic, and sometimes they overestimate so chairs have to be moved around from room to room.

In the past Mike has overestimated people’s interest in hearing what God has given me to say, and underestimated the interest of the topic that is being presented in the room next door.  More than once people have come into my room and borrowed chairs for other workshops.

So Friday night, as I was setting up the room, I thought, “I’m just going to leave some of these chairs folded up so it’s easier for people to borrow them.” But when I showed Mike what I’d done, he told me to set them all up.  So even though I didn’t think we would use them all I did what I was told.

Saturday morning, as I was walking down the hall, I glanced into the room next door and surveyed their chair situation.  In my mind I was already planning on giving some of my chairs away and I wanted to make sure they had room.  I mean I have been doing conference for six years now and I know how this goes-at least how it has gone before.

To be honest it used to bother me, it’s hard to speak when you think people aren’t interested in what you’re saying, but through a very long and painful process God has really grown me in that area.  Now pleasing Him is what is foremost in my mind.   

The first workshop had twenty-plus people, for planning purposes Mike makes us count attendance, which is pretty normal for a conference of three hundred, the second workshop had more, which again is normal, but what wasn’t normal was that in last workshop all the chairs were filled and for the first time ever people had to go get chairs from other rooms.  And today’s verse came to mind.

Now I know chairs are not a big deal, and numbers don’t really mean anything, but in this case God knew I wanted to know that I had finished well, and I really felt like this was His way of telling me that I had.

Love,

Jill