Ever Faithful

God will make this happen, for he who calls you is faithful.

1 Thessalonians 5:24

God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

1 Corinthians 1:9

                Wow, it’s been quite awhile since I last posted. That means I’m probably going to get pretty chatty! I will try to give a relatively condensed version of what the Lord has been teaching me over the past two months. Actually, condensing was probably not true; I am terrible at condensing my stories, and I like to ramble about what God has done. Who can blame me; we serve a mighty God that deserves all the glory and praise forevermore. Bear with me in this endeavor, God is good! If you don’t get anything else from this blog post, please get the following points:

·         God is faithful. (1 Thessalonians 5:24; 1 Corinthians 1:9 among many others!)

·         He is good to me even though I am so VERY undeserving. (Romans 5:8 among many others)

·         He is merciful, gracious and patient as He leads me in this journey.

·         He is constantly making me new. (Revelation 21:5; 2 Corinthians 5:17)

·         I will never be perfect, but I bear Christ’s righteousness because He became my sin and died in my place. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

·         The Lord adopted me as His daughter, and I can think of no greater love than to be called a child of God! (2 Corinthians 6:18, 1 John 3:1)

(If nothing else, look up the Scripture references… we serve an awesome God! He is Truth.)

                What I’d like to do is share a little about the Lord’s leading on my life over the past little while. Hopefully at one point or another, you’ll be able to connect the dots between where I was to where I am now. It’s about to be story time, and we all know how I love details and rabbit trails… so best of luck to you readers, I hope you can piece together this life puzzle. If not…main point = God is faithful.

                As I finished out my junior year of undergrad a couple weeks ago, I guess you could say I experienced some form of burnout. I was left feeling pretty exhausted and stressed out; but thankfully, the Lord had something to teach me. He rescued me as He always does, and He had sanctification and ministerial preparation on my heart like usual. I want to pursue full-time ministry as a missionary overseas, and I believe the Lord has been intentionally and directly preparing me for such ministry since 2006. I just did not realize it yet (nor would I have accepted that type of call on my life …nor would I have wanted to even imagine that lifestyle for myself back then).

[Side note: Most of you are familiar with my passion for motherhood. Although I highly value, honor, and believe in the institution of marriage and the plan of parenthood, I think the Lord may have something a little different for my life when it comes to motherhood. This is totally and completely opposite of what you would have ever heard come out of Joelle Forbes’s mouth even just six months ago! Here’s a very short version of how a conversation went with my best friend the other day (by the way, Emily is getting married on Saturday, May 21st!!!).

                Joelle: I’m just not so sure that having kids is what God would have for me anymore…  what if I am truly supposed to be a mother to orphans? Those children will be my own… there’s a lot more to the missionary life…

                Emily: What?! That was the only thing you have always been all for… being a mom was like the only thing you had going for you.

Don’t worry, I didn’t take it personally so there is no need to be offended for me. That is who I was: Joelle Forbes--future supermom and churched up version of a housewife.

What I concluded from my lovely best friend –who is about to become a wife tomorrow!—is that God changes everything. Seriously, when you pray things like, “Lord, change my heart” or “Change my life” or “Make me like You, Jesus” or “I surrender everything to You, do what You will for my life” or “Please rid me of myself so I am all for You and all about You”…when you pray those words as I have done, you better bet the Lord is faithful in fulfilling those requests! And oftentimes, I have the audacity to sit there and ask God, what in the world do YOU think You are doing with ME and MY life?!? Oh wait, did I say I was going to live for you? I really said I would give you everything? I gave You total control? I really said that?

Trust me, He will change you. Hear me on this, the Lord loves you and cares for you. Your sanctification is important to Him; He has an awesome plan for your life. Perhaps He’s waiting for you to give Him the pen to write your story like He was for the first 15 years of my life.]

I never imagined I would abandon myself to live for someone else, to have my one ambition to be making Someone other than myself known among the nations. I also never imagined I would be going across the world to tell others about that Person so soon. The gospel of Christ IS that important. His salvation message is more important than whether or not I get married or have kids of my own. His message calls me to live for Him, and I’m learning that I love Him more than anything this world could ever offer. He is enough, so I’m running after Him alone. Pursuing His amazing grace.

Anyway, the summer before my junior year, I finally decided to get serious about praying for wisdom and for the Lord’s direction on my life. Caution: He WILL change your plans if He has something else that will bring glory to His holy and precious name.

I knew I was called into some kind of ministry in 2006, and I realized that I was neglecting to be involved in ministering to others my first year of college. So I decided to enter the ministry of a prayer leader at Liberty University. As a prayer leader, we spend lots of time in…(yep, you guessed it)…prayer! This ministry changed a lot about who I am and how I communicate with my Savior…mostly because I was given the opportunity to intentionally pray for others and experience growth as I poured what I was learning into the 5 beautiful ladies in my prayer group and interact with my leadership team. I began to pray more and more for God’s direction and clarity on my life. Time and time again, I was led to passages in the Bible that explained who Jesus was and what He called people to do to follow Him. So I realized that I wanted true fellowship with Jesus, I wanted to live a missional life for Him because I believe He calls us to live a life worthy of the Gospel (this means more than a one-time I’m-in-prayer, now-sign-this-card moment). As I continued to pray about this new development in my heart, He continued to lead me to passages that pointed to the ministry of Jesus—to seek and save the lost. It then began to get personally uncomfortable and quite honestly frightening! Jesus was calling me to lay down my life, leave everything, take up my cross, and follow Him. After I decided that obedience was my desire, He then revealed to me that He was still calling me to give up more. I was past the point of being uncomfortable…I had nowhere but the cross to look…He had stripped me of just about everything I had once loved and clung to, now it was He who was holding me. I had truly fallen in love with Jesus. He became everything. He is everything.

That’s where this trip to the Philippines came in…and I’m sure in another blog post, I will share more about how I was called to serve in the Philippines in the summer of 2011, but I’ll have to skip over that part for now so I can get to what God has specifically laid on my heart the last two months.

Now…back to the beginning of the blog.

                God used the past two months to once again reveal that His faithfulness stretches to the skies (Psalm 36:5; 57:10). It all began with my call to ministry, and He continues to further clarify this direction, while also teaching me to walk humbly with Him, trusting Him every step of the way.

                At this point in my life, He wanted to show me what happens in ministry when I don’t get rest and try to rely on my own strength and power. Unfortunately it’s easy to take the focus off of God and place it on myself. This is usually the point where I begin to worry if not absolutely panic about every detail of every situation. Questions and doubt come into play, and I feel overwhelmed and defeated.

                I’m reminded of Elijah in 1 Kings 17-19 when I think about my feelings of burn out. Elijah, once experiencing awesome provision from God (not sure if being fed by ravens is exactly our modern-day definition of awesome but stick with me), is then called to go somewhere else. He is sent on the mission to which God called Him. The brook dries up, but the Lord is still faithful! Elijah is called and then has this totally awesome experience (this is probably the better picture of awesome…check it out! 1 Kings 18:16-46). He is given strength from God to call down fire from heaven on the altar to prove that the prophets of Baal are worshiping false gods and that the Lord is indeed God. God faithfully provides and these people turn to praise that the Lord is God. After having this awesome experience with God, Elijah flees for fear of His life. He pleads with God for his life to be taken; God later provides rest, food and drink. Elijah needed rest. He was burnt out. Though my year did not quite compare to the amazing work of God in the Israelites and through Elijah, I found my situation similar to Elijah. I needed rest, and I needed God’s provision. I doubted, I pouted, I complained, I pleaded, yet God was faithful and He was still Jehovah-Jireh (Provider!) because the Lord is God and I am not!!

                It was during the height of my exhaustion that I was studying the book of Romans. I love this New Testament book. Not only does it present the gospel, it defines faith in the gospel and our position in Christ thanks to His death, burial, and resurrection. Romans 3:3 specifically stood out to me one stressful week. Apostle Paul asks, “What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness?”

                The first time I read the verse, I wrote it down and moved on. It wasn’t something I really wanted to hear or read considering the huge accumulating to-do list I had for the week on top of the long list of things that needed to be worked out but weren’t getting anywhere (prayers that still weren’t answered according to MY thoughts and plans… details of the trip that I wanted to know… internship paperwork that was frustrating and time-consuming… leadership events that required time and energy that I didn’t think I had… and my complaints went on and on). So needless to say, I wasn’t really in the mood for the “where is your faith?” speech from Jesus. (Luke 8:25)

                The next day, I was beyond tired. I needed sleep, but I also needed time to spend actually listening to the Spirit. So I listened. This is what in my heart I heard, “What if YOU did not have faith? Will YOUR lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness?” …So I asked myself, “What if I did not have faith? Will MY lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness?”

And then it hit me.

1. I lacked faith, yet God was still faithful.

2. The Kingdom of God does not depend or rely on ME. It actually has fairly little to do with me. I am simply a voice and a vessel that God has chosen to use for HIS glory. It’s not about me. It’s all about JESUS.

                You might be thinking that it’s easy to say God is faithful and to convince yourself of that, but where’s the proof? Well, that huge to-do list and that long list of worries…they were all taken care of… on that day…AFTER I listened to the Holy Spirit ask me if my unbelief caused God to be unfaithful. When I felt the prodding of the Spirit, I answered as I did above. It’s not about me (thankfully), and Your faithfulness does not depend on what I do or don’t do, if I believe or not, if I have faith or doubt or worry….

                The proof:  the prayer requests had indeed been answered, and I now see the good of the situations. A door actually wound up being opened that I believed was closed. One important note here: God’s ways and thoughts are not mine (SEE Isaiah 55:8-9!) The details of the trip were actually brought to my attention through a couple e-mails I got from my contact in the Philippines within a couple days, definitely in time for me to complete my paperwork on time and avoid the $100 late fee! The internship paperwork was then completed and fulfilled a complete hour before the deadline, which then allowed me to complete BOTH my internships this summer (huge praise!). Those were just a few of my worries that literally cost me hours of pouting and complaining… Despite who I am and how I act, my God is faithful all the time. He will never be unfaithful. He is forever faithful. And unlike you and me, He is UNCHANGING. (If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny who he is. 2 Timothy 2:13)

I end this long post in praise like Isaiah called out, “O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things, things planned long ago.” (Isaiah 25:1) My God is ever faithful :)

God’s faithfulness has never depended on the faithfulness of his children. He is faithful even when we aren’t. When we lack courage, he doesn’t. He has made a history out of using people in spite of people.

Max Lucado

Look to the cross to find God’s ultimate faithfulness.

                But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8

Below is (hopefully) a song that a friend of mine introduced to me when we were talking about "my story." This is a song written and produced by Jordan Herrera. I thought it went well with this post. It's on itunes if you'd like to purchase it!

Scarlet - Story

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