when you put your {scared} self out there

It'd been a month ago when I had written a simple little note of encouragement God had put on my heart for our local homeschooling group. I stashed it away. Waiting for if and when God would prompt me to send it.

And the more time went on, the more fear grew in the belly of that beast-y flesh.

I trembled.

I began to think I heard it all wrong. I wondered if maybe pride was the thing that propelled me to pen it in the first place.

I questioned everything, thinking God never really spoke that to my heart and what a foolish, fool-hearty pen-woman I must be to think God gave me any words at all.

Besides, it'd never been done before. Ever.

But several days ago came the passionate burn and I was thrown back in fire of the beast. I pulled the note back up, re-read it. Nibbled my lip in worrisome thought and opened "post message" on the homeschooling loop and stared at the blank page. I couldn't even "copy" and "paste" for fear it would accidentally "send" before I was Gideon-fleeced sure.

And right then, with two pages open, one blank and one full of those words, my "inbox" received an email.

Thankfully a distraction. A meditation from some ladies in my home fellowship, something to ponder and yet, the email was the first sign. But I closed the windows, shut down the computer and let it rest, but I didn't rest well.

The next day came and I scoured other words, read blogs, left a zillion comments (which I don't normally do) and more "signs" were broadcast like highway billboards. Others in their own words of doing the thing never done before and doing it scared. I dropped my own fears in the comment boxes and this time I queasily waited.

When the third day came, I was slammed full-frontal with the dew on the fleece.

One of my super-quiet friends from the fellowship put her scared self out there and shared a humongous blessing of an email. Oblivious to my own dilemma, she typed, "I will share without proofreading for fear I will delete it before sending it!"

I thought "What courage! What a great God we serve!" Who knows what small, step you take, with fear and trembling, might be the very thing a person needed? And who knows the harvest of it but God?

As I read her email, the same theme in her words where in my note, worrying about tomorrow, what we will eat, wear, what it holds and how it holds us bondage. Who can do that but God? And here she was with the courage to "send". While I clung to the cliff to save my life, she hurled hers over it's dark edge.

My friend in cypersphere reading this, if God has given you something and you're re-applying some anti-perspirant because your in an all-out sweat on a cliff-hanger, sling yourself out there in God. And don't just do it afraid, but do it very much afraid.

When we plunge over that dark edge, we find His brightness burning at the chaff of our stinking flesh. The painful nails of the cross comes by fear, or conflict, or trials and tribulations but never in comfort. So when the nail of fear comes, let it pierce our rotten flesh to the wood of this world and do it, anyway.

Dear one, I tell you, when we are called to die to self, we fall as if dead at His feet because this is the exact position in which we exalt Him.

So I ask you, and myself, what small or big thing has He called your scared self to do?

"And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid... Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this. " Revelation 1:17 and 19 NKJ


 At Laura's and L.L. Barkat's today....also over at Jenny's: