Blog

Written by Lisa Mason
on 28th June 2022

I’m no stranger to overwhelm. It hits me most often when I travel on the train, or enter busy public spaces. All the houses, all the people. Everywhere. It blows my mind and I feel daunted by the task of making disciples of all nations. This is an impossible task even for the most gifted evangelist. I write myself off and ask God for a smaller job description.

My next logical step is to decide that if I can’t reach everyone, then I just need to throw myself into helping someone. I look around me and see that there is poverty, there is loneliness, there is homelessness and powerlessness. I search for the role that will help me to feel like I am playing my part in alleviating somebody’s suffering but it isn’t long before I am overwhelmed by just one person’s pain which I see multiplied a thousand times around me. And I am back where I began again, feeling small, responsible and worthless.

This place feels uncomfortable to me. I resent my weakness. I crave the emotional gratification of believing that I can make a difference to someone’s life, that I have a valuable, important role to play in caring for others. I want a ministry or a job title that shows people how very much I care. Because I really do care.

At the Catalyst Leaders’ Conference on Friday, Steve Uppal opened with Isaiah 66v1-2:

This is what the Lord says:

“Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?” declares the Lord. “These are the ones I look on with favour: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.”

This passage speaks straight into my overwhelm. I may be daunted by the size of the world - to God, it is just his footstool. I might feel a pressure to build a ministry for him, but he cannot be impressed by anything I can make.

God has brought me, again, to a place of surrender. It is messy and painful, a process that I would rather bypass than participate in. But he has shown me my pride and fear for what they are. More importantly, he has helped me to know that it is not his voice that accuses me of being worthless, small and insignificant - as if those are negative things. God loves my smallness, my realisation that I can do nothing in my own strength. He looks with favour on my humility, my contrite spirit. Only when I am emptied of my own desires to puff myself up, can I be useful in serving his plan to glorify his name in all the earth.

Last week we read the story of the small boy giving the whole of his tiny lunch into Jesus’s hands - knowing that it was nowhere near enough food to meet the hunger of the people around him. Knowing too, that he was giving up his own chance to feed himself with the lunch that he had prepared. I want to live my life like that boy, giving the little that I have into Jesus’s hands, not fearing for my future or trying to look after my own needs to feel busy and important. How about you? Are you feeling overwhelmed? Insignificant? Are you holding anything back? Are you waiting to see what God does before you fully commit to him? Join me now in praying this prayer written by C Anderson:

Lord Jesus, if you want my bread and fish, I give it to you. Looking at the needs, what I have to offer seems so small. I am often afraid. But here I am Lord. I don’t want to give myself to you halfway. I don’t want to hold back. All I am, all I have, it’s yours. Do your miracles. Feed the thousands through my life and efforts. Amen.