Sunday, February 12 Our eyes are on You, O God

In 1 Corinthians 10:31, we are told to do everything in such a way that God receives the glory. In Colossians 3:23, we are encouraged to wholeheartedly carry out God's mission for us here on earth. In our efforts to ensure that this current RWC workshop is a success, David and I have done everything we could think of to prepare for it. We feel like we have been faithful to the exhortations in these verses as we've laid plans, contacted people, prepared lessons, bought supplies, and so on.

It was therefore quite disappointing when some of the people whom David anticipated playing a key role in the workshop never turned up for the training. Whether this was due to schedule conflicts or to lack of interest, I have no way of knowing, but it was both frustrating and discouraging to see a year's worth of planning leading to something less than what we had imagined for this workshop.

Yesterday, however, as we prepared for the word collection that will begin tomorrow, we reminded ourselves that we had done all that was humanly possible and that we now needed to place the entire workshop in God's hands, for Him to accomplish what He desired, recognizing that that might be different than what our own goals for it have been. We prayed that our arch-enemy's attempts to thwart God's purposes would themselves be thwarted and that God would receive glory through whatever results from this workshop.

I was reminded of 1 Corinthians 3:7, which states (in my words) that those who do the planting and the watering are not to be focused on or honored, but it is God—who causes the growth and is therefore the real mover and shaker—who is all-important and who is the one to receive the honor and glory for what is accomplished. I thought, too, of Gideon's army of 32,000 men that was pared down to 300 because it would then be clear that any accomplishment was God's alone.

So, while the number of people who attended the training sessions this past week was smaller than we had hoped and planned for, making it difficult for us to conceive how to achieve our objectives for the workshop, we are trusting that God will use those who have been trained to bring Him glory through the result—whatever that is. I encouraged David and the others by pointing out that those who did attend the training sessions seem to have gotten a good grasp on both the purpose and the techniques for the workshop, so we have a high-quality core of people to work with.

Bottom line: We've done all we could to prepare. Now we look to God to do whatever He desires with our preparations.