Meditation Monday: "God's will...with love" Donna

I am fired up! While studying John 4:1-42 with the DL Ladies on Sunday I got super pumped! John 4 is the story of the Samaritan woman at the well and I cannot tell you how many times I have heard/read this story. (It’s a lot.) But this time was different; I began to focus less on the desperation of the Samaritan woman and more on how Jesus handles this ministry opportunity. Honestly, Jesus is the perfect mix of grace and truth, of which we model our personal ministries after.

What can we learn?

• We are called to take an interest in every person’s life that we meet. This doesn’t mean hanging out with them in all of your free time because that would literally be impossible. It means genuinely caring about someone that you meet. When you ask how they are, listen and care about the answer. Remember their name and show them God’s love no matter which side of the tracks they are from. These actions will be pleasing to the Lord because it is His will for you. Who knows how that random person will end up blessing and encouraging you! Phillipians 2:13
• Check your intensions. Don’t take an interest in someone to boost your own “gospel-spreading” numbers. Jesus didn’t talk to the Samaritan woman to tell his disciples that He saved another person. The only thing we have to boast in is Jesus and our own personal weaknesses, so what better way to do that than to love every person sincerely.  2 Corinthians 1:12, Psalms 32:2
• If it is the will of God, the outcome does not matter! Because of the urgency of the Gospel we often judge our ministry by the outcome of situations. “Does that girl I got lunch with want to come to BCM now? Oh, she doesn’t… I must have failed.” NO! If it is God’s will for you to love every other person, which it is, the outcome does not matter. Do not quantify the Kingdom of God. It is one of the biggest things I struggle with but when we quantify the Kingdom, we quantify God and his will. 1 Thessalonians 2:3-5

This topic has been on my heart recently because I would always have expectations of God in regards to my personal ministry. This was volatile to my faith and everything I knew about God. Once I earnestly set out to please God in my ministry, He began to give me gaps in my schedule for fellowship with nonbelievers. Pour out the love God gives you for other people so His will can be done.

Honestly, this is something I am still really working on and praying about. But the hope is that we don’t have to prove our worth to God, He already did that for us. Also, if you don’t know where to start with any of this information, check out 1 Thessalonians 5:18.

Let me know if you want to discuss this topic further. I love you ladies very much!

- Donna

Donna is a sophomore and Discipleship Leader at BCM. She loves acting goofy and spiking people in the face with volleyballs.

Be available, be aware, be obedient

Hello beautiful women! It is so good to be back in Blacksburg with all of you. You don’t know how much of an encouragement it is to have so many women in my life who are passionately pursuing our Heavenly Father. I don’t know about you, but I can feel that we have an amazing year ahead of us. I expect God to move in incredible ways! However, it takes some action on our parts as well.  Our faithfulness and obedience to what the Lord lays before us is crucial for his glory to be revealed through our lives. 

This is something that God grew me in a lot over the summer, and I know that it is going to be tested in my life this year. Join me as we take a look into what I learned about being available, being aware, and being obedient.

Be available. This can be interpreted in several ways, and it really depends on where you are in life. But it can deal with your heart, your mind, your time, your priorities, your focus, your energy, etc. I feel like being available with your time is more obvious than the other ones I listed, so let’s look at some others. Another way to put “be available” is “be present.” In whatever situations you find yourself in, however routine or spontaneous or exciting or mundane they might be, be present. Be all there.  What I mean by this is try to focus fully on the present moment in which God has placed you. For me, I have to remind myself of this when I may be worried or stressed out about something that doesn’t have to do with my present situation, and especially if I am feeling insecure. These things can easily keep my heart and my mind from being available for the Spirit to work through me, or from being available to people around me. The first step in being faithful to the Lord with the opportunities that He puts in front of you is to make sure your heart is available for him to begin moving.

Be aware. It’s almost difficult to separate being available and being aware, but I notice in my heart that I can’t be aware without first being available. Being aware means once you are focused on the present moment, keep your eyes open to the opportunities that might come up in which God wants you to be faithful. When you are at work, in class, or at the grocery store, try to be fully there – in thought and in action. Once you are, how can you see God at work? Can the surface level conversation with a coworker, a classmate, or the cashier turn into an opportunity to share God’s love with them? I believe that we have opportunities to bring Christ into conversations all the time, because I have experienced this a lot more this summer than I ever have before. I think it’s all about perspective. If you’re focusing on, “I can’t wait to get off work” or “I’d rather be hanging out with someone than in class” or “I have so much homework to do tonight” when you’re at the grocery store, you might not be as aware of the Spirit prompting you to ask how the person beside you is doing and really caring about them. Be fully there, and be aware.

“Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” – Colossians 4:5-6 

Be obedient. The most important step comes after you have focused your mind, heart, and priorities, and you are intentional about being aware of your surroundings. That is obedience. We can prepare all we want for an opportunity to share God’s love and to share the Gospel, but it is sometimes intimidating to follow through with the Lord’s promptings. Over the past couple years, the Lord has challenged me a lot in this. Before, I never knew what it meant to be prompted by the Spirit to do something so I certainly never obeyed Him. However, once I became more aware of the fact that God does lead us in every day moments, not just on mission trips, I realized I had a choice. That choice was to either ignore the feeling I had that was from the Lord, or to take a step of faith and obey. It started out with very small tasks, like to smile at someone walking across the Drillfield or go say hi to a neighbor. But the more frequently I followed through with the things that the Lord led me to do, the more I began to hear Him and to know His voice. As I grow in obedience, I am also growing in boldness. Be obedient with the tasks that God puts before you, no matter how big or small they are. I think it is very important to be faithful with the little things. Yes, we might have grand callings in life or extravagant opportunities, but sometimes it is even harder to be faithful and obedient with the day in, day out routine situations.  A verse that this makes me think of is:

“One who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much…” –Luke 16:10.

Thanks for joining me in this reflection. I pray that all the women of the BCM will look for every opportunity to share the redeeming love of Christ with the people in our every day lives. We are blessed with a mission field right at our fingertips here at Virginia Tech and in the community. “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Luke 10:2)