Through the Door to Freedom
Image by Rowan Freeman
I can still hear her voice in my head. “Are you trying to do it right?” she said. In my voice lesson, my teacher could tell that I was not free in my approach. I was trying to achieve the vocal technique she was teaching me in constraint rather than in the joy of singing. This was affecting the outcome, preventing me from reaching the full potential of which she knew I was capable.
Recently I have been reminded of how much God’s providence supersedes my efforts. This is not to mitigate the importance of my effort to let His will be done in my life and be His instrument, but it is to alleviate the undue pressure that I often put on myself. Sometimes fear can encroach and try to wiggle its way into the genuine desire to do God’s will. It is well to try to “do it right” by being an instrument of God, but it is good to reflect upon the spirit with which we approach this. If fear is there, it could be an indication that there is a deeper root system lying underneath that needs some attention.
I threw a mug on the wheel awhile ago that had been forgotten on the shelf. Amidst other projects, I picked it up and used it as a test pot for a different glazing technique. I was not trying to make something beautiful. This pot simply became a means to serve my other projects. Later, as I was stacking our glaze kiln, I needed another pot with our “pleasing plum” glaze. Searching for available pots, I used that utilitarian mug, not really caring how it would turn out with the streaks of glaze it already had on it.
The next day, when it came out of the kiln, it already had two admirers. I had not planned to sell it at all, but when I realized that others saw value in it, I decided to set it out. It sold just a couple days later. The man who bought it was a glass thrower and said that the design on the mug from the two different glaze combinations reminded him of glass throwing. I was so encouraged by this whole story! It opened my eyes just to how big God really is, how beyond my efforts He is.
Again, there is goodness in my efforts when I am very intentional, but there are times when this desire to be God’s instrument begins to sour and morph into trying to control the outcome. There is a certain detachment that is required when doing one’s work for the Lord, a release of control. Often, my fear of “getting in the way” or “messing something up” that the Lord is trying to do can lead me to be so calculating that I start to live in fear rather than in delighting in the Presence of the Lord. I forget that I’m not the one who is in control in the first place. I forget that before God wants a certain outcome in ministry towards another, He wants to be with me and minister to others through the joy of our union that we share together. To begin to view what I do only as a means to touch another person is to begin to take on the notion that God would “use” me. And of course, He does use me as His instrument, and that is what we want! But what I am describing is a use that forgets the dignity of the one being used. When God works through me, He never loses sight of me. He never loses sight of my feelings, my freedom, and the inner workings of my being. He wants me to be His instrument in complete freedom in Him, in His joy and love. If there is a part of me that is serving in fear, that means that there is a part of me that does not know my God, that has lost sight of Who He Is. It is there that He desires to minister to me, even as I minister to others in, through, and with Him.
The experience of making and selling this mug showed me a lot. There is nothing outside of His sight when I seek to serve others. He does not forget to care for my soul, too. I was reminded that I can be more carefree, knowing that I don’t have to worry about “doing it right” in a fearful sense when I am working and living for the Lord because His Providence sees further and so much deeper than I ever could. Something that meant almost nothing to me meant so much to another person. In a certain sense, I can just show up and be confident that the Lord will work in and through me, and I don’t need to make it more complicated. At the end of the day, I’ve learned that things aren’t as “up to me” as I often think. God is so much bigger than me, and I should not let fearful “doing it right” try to snuff out the joyful confidence I can have in my God.
I find myself standing by an open door. This door leads into a wide-open field of abundance where there is room to frolic in the freedom of God’s love for me, where my state of being can be that of simply being delighted in, and in turn, delighting myself in the Lord. This is the cup that overflows to others. I ask myself, What would it be like to walk through this door every day, at every moment? To live life in eternal delight and play with God, learning that ministry can overflow from this place…
Song for Reflection:
