Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Even my words

Exodus 4
10 Moses said to the LORD, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue." 11 The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD 12 Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say."

I am constantly amazed when I show the least amount of intelligence, wisdom, skill, etc… I know that part of that comes from the feeling that I am inadequate. Part of it also comes from the fact that I’m not really that smart, I’m not that wise, I’m not that skilled. God gave me my brain, my intelligence, my skill. Every time I do something good it is because He allowed me to. Every good decision I make at work, every confrontation that I de-escalate, every decision I make on the Appeals Committee, every bad person I take off the streets, every person I protect is because He gave me that ability.

On Saturday night we were at Sam and Amy’s. Everybody there could sing except for me and Macguines. They decided it would be a good idea to play American Idol on the Wii. And guess who they picked to go first? Me. The game said I was doing so bad that it turned the song off. I really didn’t want to play American Idol but I wanted to play with our friends and I knew this game was right up Amanda’s alley.
Then Macguines sang and it did the same thing to him.

The second time I sang though I did pretty good. After watching for a while I figured out how to get it to let Macguines to sing a whole song. The rest of my turns weren’t too bad. I wasn’t close to Amanda, Sam or Amy but I wasn’t too embarrassed. I know that it wasn’t because of me. God helped me because I probably would have had a really bad evening if I sang as I normally do and I probably would have been embarrassed. Thank you God.

And when I was a missionary in Mexico we had to stand up on our next to last night there and give our testimony. Nobody had ever talked to me about my testimony. In fact when I started on the trip I wasn’t even saved. How was I supposed to give a testimony, I had been saved less than a week. But I stood up because everybody else was doing it and I didn’t want to be the stumbling block, or be embarrassed. So I stood up and started talking. I don’t know what I said. While we were there we were assigned translators. My translator had stood up when I did. The thing is afterwards she said that she hadn’t said anything. I talked for almost an hour. And to this day I can’t tell you what I said. I can’t even tell you in English what I wanted to say, let alone what I said in Spanish. I didn’t even have an idea of what I wanted to say in the first place. But when I was done? Wow. Everybody in the place went wild, so what I said must have been good. It was such an amazing experience that I will never forget it. I know that God took hold of me that night and used my physical body to accomplish what He wanted to. When I read the above passage I think that is what God means when He says He will help Moses speak. I still get chills thinking about that night.

Drason

2 comments:

Smiths Family Blog said...

Sometimes I wish God would keep me from saying some things. Maybe he tried but I wasn't listening. Too many times we do things based on our emotions. Bold truth without love is brutality. Its truth in love that is the key. I know this had nothing to do with your post Drason but I just felt like I should put it out there.

Amanda said...

What did you say that has got you so convicted?
Just kidding =]
We had fun the other night, we should do that again soon!