3 Commit your work to the Lord,
and your plans will succeed.Proverbs 16:3
For many years, my daily devotion would involve reading one chapter of the Hebrew Bible, one chapter of the New Testament, and a proverb. Did you know there are 31 Proverbs? That means for each day of the month you can read a proverb.
I don't have enough time to tell you the trials and tribulations of obtaining a doctorate of ministry while having two children under the age of 5, so I will sum up and say being the preacher mama to preschool aged children whilst writing a dissertation was crazy making. It was around that time that Proverbs 16:3 began to jump out at me. On the 16th of each month I would read Proverbs 16. And then, suddenly, the verse was EVERYWHERE in my life, and often on the 16th of a month, things would begin to happen for the positive in my dissertation writing and defense. Even though I had lived in Ellis County for years, for the first time during that period of my life, I noticed that on the fence of a salvage yard on I-35, right there in Ellis County someone had painted Proverbs 16:3. And I flew to Wilmore, Kentucky on the 16th of the month to defend my dissertation. It was as if the Holy Spirit had taken a big stick and slapped me upside the head to get me to listen. (I realize that's colorful language, but you don't know the relationship the Holy Spirit and I have, so don't judge. Someday I'll tell you the size of the stick used to get me to come on staff at Arborlawn when I had clearly communicated with the Lord that I was never going into full-time church ministry again, ever. PERIOD. And yet, here I am. BIG stick. HUGE.)
I find that when we want to tell the Lord what our future plans are, often the Lord takes a step back and laughs. I find that to be no different when churches tell the Lord their plans. How often do we tell God our vision for our church instead of allowing God to cast the vision for God's church. (You read that right. Arborlawn isn't your church. It's God's church. Don't believe me? Look in the Bible!) Talk to any pastor right now and (s)he will say, "Well, before Covid hit, my church was about to..." and then some awesome plan will spill out.
Covid changed all of that. Covid reminded all of us followers of The Way that the church was never ours to begin with. It has always been the Lord's. And right now, we are waiting on the Lord to breathe new life and new vision into God's church post-covid. The future of the church universal, and the future of Arborlawn UMC, will probably look very different than what we imagined pre-Covid. I kinda think this time is a lot like waiting to have a baby. 9 months of all kinds of weird emotions and eating and body changes and swollen feet and then at the end of all the weirdness, the most wonderful, beautiful creation emerges. Or waiting ten years to complete a doctoral degree and writing the dissertation in only a few months because if you don't get it done you will time out and then at the end you have a masterpiece that only you will ever read. But that's okay, because it was what the process began in you during that time that God will use in your ministry. Or planning a big 15 year in-person anniversary celebration to say we successfully merged two churches and we are doing great things in the city of Fort Worth and look at who we are and who we've been only to have Covid hit and God remind us that church was never really about a building at all.
The future of Arborlawn UMC will look so different from what you imagined, or I imagined, or any of the other staff or pastors have imagined. We can fight that and feel the Holy Spirit hit us all with a stick (Big. HUGE.) or we can wait and see what God is doing, where God is calling, and jump on board with that plan. Even though we may not want to, we can trust our future to God because we can observe from our past that God has never forgotten or forsaken us. Only when we commit our future plans to God will they succeed.
Written By: Christie Robbins