First Year: A Wonderfully Frustrating Lesson

We are fast approaching the one year Birthday (one year anniversary of our public gatherings) at Sub Terra Church. I am feeling very reminiscent about what God has done in the past year through nobodies like us. I am saying this not in a fake sense of self deprecation but in true humility. Part of me would like to say that we have implemented this amazing strategy or technique but that is not it.This is it. "I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:1-5)" Anything that has happened in Sub Terra over this last year has been not because of our wisdom but due to the power of God. Any growth in numbers and in the lives of His people has been through the power of God and God alone.

God has thought me this past year a tiny glimpse of his immense power. His timing, His working on the hearts of people and Him bringing people to us out of absolute grace. Sure sometimes God has used my annoying persistence and drive or my husbands charismatic personality,  passion for God's word and wonderful preaching. But at the end of the day what God has done was not deserved or earned. We have received all His blessings completely empty handed. So at the end of our first year of public gatherings God gets all the glory. None of this would have happened without him.

I don't at the end of the day know why God chooses to use people like us and so many others to accomplish his plans. Why over and over again He seems to use the most unlikely people for his mission. Except that it  makes it very clear it is God doing the work. "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?" (Psalm 8:3-4) What a beautiful reminder of how small I am and how wonderfully comforting the bigness and permanence of God is.

This past year has been a wonderfully frustrating lesson for me that God is in control and will bring people at the perfect time which often is not in my timing. I have invited countless people over and over who never come. Prayed many prayers for those who still do not attend our church. I would be lying if I did not say it has often been frustrating and discouraging. The wonderful part is I have seen God work in surprising ways. Ways that show me He, not us, is bringing people to Sub Terra. He has brought so many people that a year ago I did not even know or know very well. He has brought lives together in the most unexpected of ways. I have had the privilege of sharing lives with people who were once strangers. Having to trust God as people have left and seeing his faithfulness to bring others in their place. I have been blessed to see people who have not been to church in years serving in our church and getting baptized. Whole families begin to live for Jesus and desire to see others join them as well.

If you would have asked me in those frustrated moments if I would have liked to see things go as I had imagined or planned I would have of course said yes. But it was been incredible to see God's hand at work in ways I would have never planned. Much better ways. To know as hard as my family and I have worked (as well as others). In truth I am just privileged to have been given the ability to be a spectator to the work of my gracious, merciful, holy, eternal God. At the end of this first year I am glad that the only thing I can point to over and over for the miracles and life change is the work of my gracious God. 

I pray the next year is equally filled with God's presence. That he continues to work on the hearts of those around us to bring them to himself. That he would continue to do it in such a way that the only explanation is Him.