Amy Grant was seventeen the first time she was asked to play a concert, she tells in her book, Mosaic. “Up to this point, I had only sung for people I knew–family, friends, and schoolmates–and the idea that a total stranger would call and ask me to sing for a group of more strangers was mind-boggling.” She said the request was for three hundred dollars. Her mind raced, thinking of what she had saved, of how three hundred dollars would deplete her savings. She would love to go, but she couldn’t afford the money. Her friend, who was setting it up, laughed. No, they were not asking her to pay to sing — “by miracle of miracles,” she writes, they were going to pay her.
God had given Amy Grant an extraordinary gift with music — not just her people would pay her for those gifts.
I wonder at the many gifts God has given us. Amazing moments that bring us alive. Abilities to fix something or talk to someone — as many interpretations of gifts as there are gifts. I wonder at how much God is saying, “I invite you to use those gifts I’ve given you. Look to me, not to yourself — neither to your abilities to become prideful, nor to your inabilities to become faithless. Look to Me and I will accomplish amazing miracles through you. Just keep your eyes on Me.”
Mother Theresa traveled the world serving those in need. How did she, in her poverty, afford to fly around the world? She simply got on a plane without a ticket. The Lord had led her to do so, and no one dared throw her off. Her confidence was not about her but about Jesus leading her. It is not about our own abilities, nor about our inabilities, but about the miraculous working of Jesus in us. To know Him that well, that we understand the His working in and through us — this is freedom to live the way He designed us to live.
“…let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the LORD.” Jeremiah 9:24.
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