"I AM" So You Don't Have to Be

There is a link to a blog from a Pastor's Wife, in the side bar, who is providing a weekly Bible Study called "I Am So You Don't Have to Be."

In truth, I've put the link there even before I have started working through the studies. Why?

Well, I am intrigued by the title of it.

When Moses asked "Who should I say sent me?"

God answers with "I AM that I AM."

As I grew up in church, I eventually heard that the second I AM was really like a blank. Into that blank could go anything you needed. "I AM food." "I AM shelter." "I AM love." Etc.

That series of books that were out in the last decade or so, that were so extremely popular that they spun off journals and workbooks, the "Conversations With God" books, start with one basic fallacy. The author is writing in a legal pad, and writes a question about why his life is the way it is. An answer appears on the paper in a different handwriting, so he writes a question "Who are you?"

The answer to the question indicates that the title of the series is a lie. The answer is "I AM what I AM NOT."

These books are far more dangerous to the human psyche and spiritual well-being than any Harry Potter novel could ever be.

That is a slight aside to the point I want to make, though.

While I had heard that the second I AM refers to our needs, they were life's needs not referring to deficiencies in our skill, spiritual gift or personality needs inventory.

I had also heard that God is strong in our weakness. This was usually coupled with the story of Paul praying three times to have the "thorn in his side" removed. This was in reference to some medical problem, perhaps, or something that came at him from the outside of himself.

And, last, there are the letters to the seven churches in Revelation. Each of their failings was then laid on top of our individual lives. We, as individuals, were supposed to be all these things that the churches were not. We were to be perfect and be able to do everything, and do it well and right and completely.

I am 46. It was within the last two years, mainly, that I learned it is okay to be me. It is okay to have my personality and not be a type A and I don't need to be everything and do everything well. I do need to know myself, know my abilities and my limitations. But it is okay to have limitations. It is okay to not be perfectly good at everything I try.

That road of discovery started in August of 2001. I was working as a temporary secretary, filling in for someone out on maternity leave. My immediate supervisor and I just didn't click. We didn't like one another. But then, hardly anyone really liked her, but she got her job done and therefore was an asset to the organization.

One Monday morning, as I went through the pile of faxes that had come in over the weekend, there was one that should have ended up somewhere else. A different business, a different type of business, should have gotten it.

I had a couple of options of what to do with it. It was an important fax. Just how important I only discovered a couple of years later. But that day, I put it on the corner of my desk and sort of forgot about it until the end of the day.

I could have asked my supervisor for advice. But I figured her response would have been, "Does it have anything to do with my job? So, why are you bothering me with it?"

I could have called the correct place and asked for their fax number and forwarded it.

Or, I could have thrown it away.

I looked at the fax. If it was not a hoax, and if it was as important as it seemed, then the sender would have double-checked to make sure the fax had arrived safely to its destination -- so, I tossed the fax in the trash.

A couple years later, I was actually listening to a local news broadcast (I'll have to post my opinion of "news" another time to let you know how important this it). In one report, I heard the name of the person who had sent that fax.

Another year went by before all of these events filtered through the gravel in my brain and a clear picture emerged in the distillate --
I had been in that place, at that time, for that one reason: to throw away that fax. I was not supposed to forward it. I was supposed to throw it away. Apparently, the sender never did double-check on it. As a result, something that could have happened, did not.

I would not categorize my life as a bad one. I have made some bad choices along the way, but nothing dire or nasty. Yet, some of those bad choices -- they've made me wish I'd lived better, taken other roads when choices presented themselves. Some things that happened, I had no control over, but maybe my response to them could have been different.

Yet, when I realized that the road I had taken was probably the only one that would have brought me to where I am at this moment, it was probably the only one that would have put me in that one place at that one time as well. Every moment of my life has been "right" to accomplish that.

It showed me the truth of "all things work together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose."

Even my personality deficiencies are okay. If I had been a "good Christian" I would not have had any problems with my supervisor, or would not have let them keep me from going to her with that fax. Her advice, if she had given it, would have been to do the proper business thing -- forward it. And that would have been the wrong thing to do.

It took longer, though, to arrive at that realization and be okay with it -- I mean, the realization that my personality deficiencies are okay. It took hearing the teachings of a woman who has been trained in Dr. Rohm's DISC Personality Quadrant to understand that we all have different strengths and weaknesses. And that it is okay to be that way. (See link to Dr. Rohm's site in the sidebar)

When God says "I AM ...", He means, He can be all that I am not. If I am a starter but not a finisher -- He can (and will) either provide the finisher or be the finisher Himself. I tend to think, He will provide the Finisher if I ask Him to.

You see, one other thing I've discovered. Those letters to the churches in Revelation, well ... a church is a GROUP of individuals with individual strengths and weaknesses. But together, as a team, working together and not as a group of individual Lone Rangers, we can be those things that God wants us to be. We really can't be it as an individual; but in community we can. That is why He tells us to meet together regularly. We need one another; we need one another's skills and gifts and assets; we complement one another; we are a team that works together, not a group of "All-Stars" showing off.

For instance, one of the seven churches in Revelation is a church, according to another Blog I was reading recently, that is condemned for being a starter but not following through, not completing the job. As I thought about it, it struck me. Maybe their problem wasn't that they didn't follow through. Maybe their problem, and why the church would disappear, was the fact that it could not work as a team, could not work to use everyone's gifts, could not / would not live together in community.

He Is, and He provides, so you don't have to be ...