I listened to a sermon recently about stewardship, but really, it was about something deeper.
It asked:
“What is your assignment?“
But, to know what your assignment is, you have to first know the assignor.
If you don’t know God, how can you know what He’s called you to do? How can you recognize a path as your assignment if you don’t recognize the One who gave it?
That’s where it hit me.
Sometimes we starting walking our assignment, consciously or not, and God begins to bless us.
We feel favor, momentum, growth, and expansion. But then the devil comes. He comes in the form of greed. He strips us of our assignment and makes us believe that the rewards were the assignment.
The car, the money, the fame, the house, and all of the rewards. We then think to ourselves, “How can I continue getting these rewards?” We begin to pursue materialism, because we misunderstand that those were all biproduct of doing our assignment.
In that moment, we begin to lose it all, doubt ourselves, and question God. The devil wins.
The pastor said something that stayed with me: “The reward is not the assignment. The assignment is the burden.” The thing that breaks your heart. The thing that weighs you down but won’t let you go. The thing that feels too hard, too big, too painful. That’s it. That’s the thing you’re here to do.
For some, they say to themselves: “My family is so broken, I need to fix it.” For others they say: “My community has no space for worship, someone needs to build it.”
The person that notices the lack, the pain, the family trauma, and knows how to fix it. That person is burdened with work and never takes the assignment. The assignment is to burden themselves with the things that cause the most pain, because they are the ones that are strong enough to fix it.
For me, that burden has always been using my voice. Not because it comes easy, but because it doesn’t. Because I’ve always been scared to be seen. Scared of judgment. Scared that what I say won’t matter.
But somewhere deep in my soul, I’ve always known I was supposed to speak. I even thought maybe that’s why I wanted to be a therapist, I knew how to articulate pain, to name what others couldn’t.
The pastor talked about salvation in the flesh vs. renovation of the soul.
The man that tills the land because his father is watching him, even if he does a good job, that is salvation of the flesh.
The man that tills the land when nobody is watching, that is salvation of the soul.
I have now posted
92 videos on
my YouTube and just now started getting views. Through the discouragement, through the disappointment, through the fear, I continued to post.
I kept opening my heart, showing up with no audience. I have a video titled, “What God Told Me After 1 Hour of Silence in the Woods.” It’s about this very concept.
God told me to look at the trees. “Do they concern themselves with the judgement of the trees around them? Do they grow to prove to the other trees that they can or do they just grow because it is in their nature? Whether anyone is watching, they will continue to grow, because growth for them is about survival, not about approval.”
God then told me to look at the ants on the ground. “When an ant brings food home, does it compete with the others. Does it care if another ant brought home more food? No, they ant doesn’t concern itself with the judgement of other ants, as they are all one. Growth for them is about survival, not approval.”
Whether anyone is watching or not, I will be growing. It is in my nature. My videos aren’t about who sees them, just that I showed up for myself and God. Does the preacher preach to win over the audience or does he preach because that is his assignment?
Your assignment is the soil. Your assignment is the tilling. The hard, slow, invisible work of showing what God has done in you.
In Luke, when Jesus delivered the man possessed by demons, Mob, the man begged to follow Him. But Jesus said, “No. Stay here. Tell people what God has done for you.” That was his assignment. And sometimes I think that’s mine too, not to run from platform to platform, trying to be everywhere, but to be a living symbol that I’ve been delivered.
Not just to say it, but to show it. Through consistency. Through vulnerability. Through obedience.
So no, the assignment is not the clicks. The assignment is not the reward. The assignment is that I keep going, that I speak even when I feel small. That I use my voice even when I want to hide. That I share what God has done in me, because that’s what He asked of me.
That’s where the real reward lives anyway.
Renovation of the Soul.
