When God Does the Most With the Least Expected

In my life, I’ve learned that God often does the most with the least expected.

We often think we’ve got it all figured out.  In our estimation, we have enough knowledge to map out God’s plan for our lives.

But that rarely happens.  Oftentimes, God uses things in our lives that we never ever saw coming.

I said “yes” to the ministry when I was a teenager.  I really didn’t know what area I wanted to serve, I liked doing so many different things.

And yet, if you look at what God is using me the most in right now, I never would have seen this coming.

First, I never expected to be a Worship Pastor.  I was involved in worship as early as I can remember, but I didn’t see the coming.  Yet, when God started shifting things at North Side, my job as Pastor of College and Missions got changed to Worship.

While I am not the best by a long stretch, I see how God has put a lot of things together to have me in this position.  I don’t have the skills as many other Worship Pastors or Music Ministers have, but my unique gifting seems to work with what is happening at North Side right now.  And somehow, God actually has me in a position of helping encourage and equip other worship pastors to unite their churches and make the worship portion more about picking out songs that create the least resistance.  Never saw that one coming.

Second, I never expected to write Bible study curriculum.  It’s even a wild story with how I got started.  I emailed the guy who hired me as camp pastor of Centrifuge to write a review on a book I was writing (Freshmen 15), and his job had changed and asked me to write Bible study curriculum as a contract writer.  I have now written 3 units of LifeTruths curriculum for parents with LifeWay.  Out of my work with him, I was asked by another editor to work on Courageous’ Honor Begins at Home study and eventually the Resolution for Men Bible study.

This week, over 2,000 churches are using the LifeTruths curriculum as their Sunday School material.  While I’m in Greenwood, hammering out my responsibilities, over 2,000 churches are getting 3 devotions this week and a lesson that I wrote almost a year ago.  At the same time, numerous churches are using the Honor Begins at Home study.  Based upon the Love Dare study, LifeWay anticipated that over 14,000 churches would eventually use this curriculum.

Those aren’t people – those are churches!  Somewhere around the USA this week, two units that I worked on way back when might be used to introduce people to Jesus, reconcile people to loved ones, help men become fathers, help see a biblical description of God and so much more!

The reason I wanted to share this with you today is not to say look at many people are being impacted by what I’ve done.  It’s look how many people God is impacting with things that I never saw coming.  I never desired to get into the curriculum writing ministry.  I don’t know if I’ll do anymore, but for a certain season, God decided that I needed to – and he made it happen!  I never saw that I would be working on a worship album of sermon remixes this year.  I didn’t force any doors open, he swung them wide open.  And doors that I sometimes tried to open he kept shut so that I had the time to walk through ones he had planned.

God often does the most with the least expected.  So before you try to close or open certain doors, try being patient and watch what he does.  I guarantee his plans are not only higher (Isaiah 55:8-9), but they are better!