If you are like me, I’m sure you have had times in your life when you wondered if what you were doing for God was amounting to anything…

Maybe you’ve taken a stand for God with some friends and it seemed all it did was cause a rift in your relationships.  Or maybe you declared your faith around the coffee maker at work and before you knew it you were the only one standing there…

I think things like this have happened to all of us… I personally started ministering on the streets of Detroit at14 years old when Detroit was given the notorious title of “Murder Capital of the World”.  Having been in ministry a majority of my life now, I have untold numbers of these, “Feeling like what I was doing didn’t make a difference…” stories but one thing that time has shown me is, that often what we don’t see in the here and now is revealed in the future as time and God are allowed to do their thing…

So many times over the years I have said, “I’m never more honored than when my friends need a pastor and they call me…”  What that shows me is that I have been what I was supposed to be in their lives and even when I thought no one cared or no one was looking…God was doing something … because God is always doing something…

This past week a friend from High School contacted me.  Our last encounter was 20 years ago.  I remember numerous occasions of sitting around the lunch table and sharing my faith with little response other than an occasional smirk from Michael.  But in his email to me, he recalled that he always remembered that I was a “preacher” and he was glad to see that I still was, because right now he was going through the most difficult time of his life and needed a pastor…

This is yet another perfect example in my life of God’s Word never returning void.  Many times, we simply do not see what God is doing in the situation where so often we feel like our efforts were all but a complete waste of time…But experiences have shown me that time spent with and for God is NEVER a waste!

We don’t always have to understand how everything is going to pan out, we just have to be obedient in the moment to be whoever or whatever God needs us to be.  It’s up to Him to do the rest.  I think this is why proverbs tells us to trust in the lord and lean not on our own understanding.  God knows what we don’t and the Holy spirit is faithful to complete the work that he started in people.

Today, I’d just like to encourage you with this: don’t worry about the end results… that’s Gods responsibility… Just show the people in your sphere of influence His love…and let God worry about the rest… He is faithful to finish what He started…