Being a relevant Christian

"Show me my purpose, Lord."  I remember that being my first thought right after accepting Christ.

I wanted my life to matter.  I wanted it to count.  I wanted to show God how much I loved Him through my obedience to Him and my service to others, particularly my service to my husband.

As you can imagine with time the reality of life shone and the living out my desire to Him became harder and harder.

From time to time I think back to those early years of a young girl with dashing hopes and dreams of doing ministry work beside her beloved beau, struggling, striving, working in distance countries, making a difference. That was my desire.

It didn't happen like that though.

Instead, we stayed home, had some babies and I began teaching the babies at home. Day in and day out we had our same little routine.  Very simple.  Nothing complex at all.  I loved it and my life, nothing extravagant.  "Mother."  So that's it I thought.  This is my lot.

Years later . . .

God introduces me to blogging and I find a new relevance.

I remember reading an article about one of my favorite bloggers, Sarah Mae. There are lots of things that strike me about Sarah Mae, one being her business savvy. The one, however, that has truly made an impact on me is what she said in the interview that I read.

In the interview Sarah Mae said that she wanted to do a conference for Christian women bloggers and she wanted it to be relevant.  This is a loose version.

Relevant?  Hmmm.

That stuck with me, "I want to be relevant too."

I think one of the reasons it stuck with me is that I've wanted to be relevant all my life.  I would think that I'd found relevance years ago by doing this, being that or acting like ... but all too quickly, my relevance would fade.  I would come to discover that what I thought was relevant was merely an illusion.

The end was always the same for me, disappointment.

I'd basically come to the point in my Christian life where I began to believe that I wasn't and never would be as relevant—or purposeful to God's kingdom as I'd so hoped.  Sure I had had my babies and I thought my lot would be to simply teach and train them to be relevant, but for me.  . . hope had dashed.

I was back to feeling insignificant as a person, but relevant as a mother.

One day in despair, I opened my journal to write and found that there were no empty pages left.  I tore the house apart looking for paper . . . scratch paper, school paper any kind of paper where I could pen my thoughts.

I'd been visiting a hair blog because I'd just got Sisterlocks in my hair so I would visit this blog for hair advice.  I'd remember going through the blog thoroughly one day as I'd thought maybe I would do the same.

The time came.  I gave up looking for paper and in despair remembered my friends blog, who is pictured to the right, and that is when I went and registered with Blogger.

To my surprise people began to come and dialogue more and more.  I was dumbfounded.

Later I would tell a friend who was in ministry about blogging and attempt to help his ministry become relevant in the world of the blogesphere and world wide.

When things didn't work out with him, I reluctantly came back to my blog.   There was a lot to be done.  I began to pray and ask God to show me what He wanted for my blog.

It didn't take long before the Lord began to show me a number of things:

• He began to show me how quickly I am to believe in others and want to help them, but I was not so willing to help or believe in myself. 
• God showed me that He had a purpose and a plan for my life in my own generation—here and now. A plan that is relevant to His kingdom and relevant to the desires that I've had in my heart for years.
• The Lord showed me how everyday of my life has been a step closer to the relevance for the purpose He has in my life for this generation.
• And the Lord showed me how blogging, writing and all of the other things that He has placed in my heart are all relevant for what He has called me to do in this generation.

I once heard Beth Moore say, "If Christianity is the narrow way, Christian relevance is the tight rope."

I've discovered that being a Christian who lives relevant does not come accidental. To live with meaning, to live with a purpose we must purpose in our hearts to do so.

I'd thought that the things God used to touch my life—particularly the bad, disqualified me from living a life of relevance, but on the contrary I learned that "Nothing touches our lives good or bad that is not keeping with God's plan for our own generation."

Your works . . . your gifts . . . your purpose . . . chosen for this time.

Friends, as Beth Moore says, "Life is hard anyway, let's work hard and live in victory and let's make hard count."

Now when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his ancestors and his body decayed.  ~ Acts 13:36 NIV

"God through the Holy Spirit interceding within us, uses everyday circumstances to touch the whole world with His saints." ~ Oswald Chambers


xo, Angela

blog subscription  | twitter | facebook

Relevant picture source

This post is linked to:
Raising Homemakers
About A Mom