Following is a short article I wrote for our church's youth newsletter recently:
Palms sweaty, knees knocking, I lifted my eyes up to the
audience. I smiled and silently prayed, "Lord use me. Be it in whatever
way You will-just use me." For the past few weeks I had been working on my
speech for graduation, practicing until
my mouth was dry. The topic was something I was passionate about-I felt like
everything was perfect.
While I was waiting to go up to speak, however, I started to
fret, "What if nobody likes me? What if I sound stupid? What if they don't
care about what I have to say?" I wanted to impact the other graduates
with what I had to say, but what if I did not? As I sat there fretting, it
suddenly began to dawn on me how foolish my worrying was. I had become so
caught up in what I was going to say,
how I was going to be perceived, and
how I was going to be impact others
that I had forgotten who would really be doing any impacting. If anything was
going to come of this speech, it would be because
of God and despite me.
My "Senior Challenge" I want to leave with you
guys is this: The world is falling apart and there is absolutely nothing you
can do about it. It is so easy to get swept away in the, "I'm going to
feed starving children in Africa, I'm going to save a forest, I'm
gonna..." While all of these things are good, if that is all you do, it
will amount to nothing. This world is starving, and you cannot feed it. The
only thing that will make a lasting impact on this world is you letting God use
you. If you chose to let God work through you, wherever you go in life, He is
going to change the world through you feeding a starving child or saving a
tree-and the impact will be an eternal one. So go chase your dreams, wherever
they may take you, and let God change your world.
