After announcing my return to writing, I read back on my posts and one thing that stood out was the seasonality of life. Especially in leadership. Over the last year I have done many things that have been leading and in the fray. People look to me more than they did a year ago. It is utterly exhausting. On one hand it is encouraging, I guess they see something good about coming to me, on the other hand I feel completely inadequate and sometimes like a fraud. I guess there are parallels to Moses leading the Israelites. He felt ill equipped and God gave him what he needed. I am not comparing myself to all of Moses, just the feeling inadequate.
The reason I waffle on about this so soon is that I think often, we all feel inadequate. As a church staff team, we are reading a book called ‘’deeper’’ by Dane C.Ortlund. One of the points he makes is about becoming more aware of our despair. Feeling how completely sinful and evil we are allowing us to know the peace and grace of Christs work. Knowing these things that we do, these sins that we commit, and the wrongdoings we do can make us feel inadequate…and we are! Humans are unable to earn salvation, humans are unable to save themselves. We are completely inadequate, and it is only the story of salvation and the death of Christ that offers us hope. Whatever your opinion on Gods plan etc…..we can al agree that salvation comes by having a real, repentant relationship with Christ and the Trinity. Once we accept this, we are then equipped with the Holy Spirit who gives us what we need. Not supernaturally, but divinely. We still feel pain, hurt and inadequacies, but we also feel the love of our God and the forgiveness that we are endlessly needing.
I can remember that my first full time job was as a cook in an outdoor activity centre. I had not really cooked before that, a few home meals, and a little bit for a summer job. Instead, here I was cooking for 30-80 people and organising a team of gap year volunteers. To be honest, I do not know how I got through that period! For some reason, nobody died, and I even got a few lovely compliments. I can only point towards God and his guidance in that situation. Now, it was still difficult, I had to have hard talks, I had to be corrected, I had to work physically hard and I had to be gracious to the team who worked with me. What I now recognise is that these experiences have taught me much about how God calls us to be in places we do not think we should be. I was surrounded by great people in that time and that made a difference to me.
Move forward to now, I find myself constantly feeling like I am not good enough. The difference is that I also now that God has it all in His hands. Difficult conversations, encouraging folks and leading a Godly team is something that we should all feel inadequate about. The bible says that we must be humble and have the same attitude as Christ Jesus.
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