With all the talk of cheerleading on the blogs the last few days, I decided to post one of my own special God Spots.
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11
Blue and Gold Fight Fight!
No that’s not a cheer for the Michigan Wolverines but a cheer that I learned as a young girl sitting on the bottom bleacher of the football stands, watching the cheerleaders do their thing at my brothers football games.
I would come home from his games and practice the moves over and over again until I had them just right. It became a passion, it was in my blood.
Finally the time came when I was old enough to try out for a team. I wanted to be a cheerleader so bad I could taste it. I found a prayer written in a teen magazine one day and I would recite it over and over preparing for the big day.
Dear Father up in heaven, these words to thee I pray
Please help me do my best at tryouts today.
I’ve practiced hard and I hope my work will prove worthwhile
But if I do not make the squad please help me to smile
And congratulate my friends and happy be for them
For in a contest some must lose, and some are sure to win!
I just want you to know that prayer was so indelibly written in my heart that I still have it memorized 40 years later.
God blessed me and gave me the desires of my heart. I wasn’t the best cheerleader on my squad. Actually in form I was way worse than everyone else, but I was all heart and that must have outweighed the negative.
But never ever could I have known way back then, that cheerleading was a call from God.
I was twenty years past my cheerleading days when I was asked to coach my niece’s 8th grade cheer team.
In the midst of controversy over whether or not the girls could mount up in pyramids, I took over a squad of precocious pubescent girls that were grown up one day, and infants the next. Every year I said “no more”, and every year for 7 years God said “Do it again.”
Several years ago as I was out walking and conversing with God about a new organization he was asking me to begin. I stopped dead in my tracks when he put this thought in my mind. “I did not create you to be a leader.” Of course I immediately responded with my usual “I don’t get it God.” And then continued with : “Why would you have asked me to begin this group if I am not supposed to be a leader?”
He told me I wasn't to think of my position as being a leader, but rather a mentor. Hmmm!
I began to think of all the times I have been in a leadership position and I realized that I was always much happier and much more effective as a vice president doing what I could to help out the President and make her job easier, or as a past president mentoring to the incoming President.
My gift wasn’t leadership, God gave me the gift to encourage, and to be His Cheerleader and encourage others in their God given roles. He’d given me a heart to cheer for a purpose all those years ago.
The point was driven home last week while I was getting my hair highlighted. One of those precocious pubescent girls I mentioned ended up being my hairdresser.
The conversation that day centered on her own precocious pubescent who was doing many of the same things her mom had done while under my charge.
I remember feeling quit vindicated. Then the topic changed and we began discussing “God Stuff.”
Before Christmas she had told me about her nephew who did not believe in God, and how much anxiety she was having because she wasn’t feeling confident enough to speak to him about it.
My advice to her was to remember that there are people who reap and people who sow, and people who prepare the soil by praying so that when the time is right the seed can be sowed and nurtured. Maybe all God was asking of her right now was to pray. And I gave her one of my favorite quotes from one of my own mentors. “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” God will let you know when the time is right. It won't be easy but He will give you the strength and the confidence when He's ready for you to witness verbally, I added.
As I sat in the chair this time, she told me how God had put one of her fellow hairdressers on her heart, who also didn’t believe in God, and how she was feeling led to continue to witness to her.
I left the salon that day doing the Praise Jesus dance in my heart (an expression I’ve stolen from Lysa T).
I began to think of all the times I have been in a leadership position and I realized that I was always much happier and much more effective as a vice president doing what I could to help out the President and make her job easier, or as a past president mentoring to the incoming President.
My gift wasn’t leadership, God gave me the gift to encourage, and to be His Cheerleader and encourage others in their God given roles. He’d given me a heart to cheer for a purpose all those years ago.
The point was driven home last week while I was getting my hair highlighted. One of those precocious pubescent girls I mentioned ended up being my hairdresser.
The conversation that day centered on her own precocious pubescent who was doing many of the same things her mom had done while under my charge.
I remember feeling quit vindicated. Then the topic changed and we began discussing “God Stuff.”
Before Christmas she had told me about her nephew who did not believe in God, and how much anxiety she was having because she wasn’t feeling confident enough to speak to him about it.
My advice to her was to remember that there are people who reap and people who sow, and people who prepare the soil by praying so that when the time is right the seed can be sowed and nurtured. Maybe all God was asking of her right now was to pray. And I gave her one of my favorite quotes from one of my own mentors. “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” God will let you know when the time is right. It won't be easy but He will give you the strength and the confidence when He's ready for you to witness verbally, I added.
As I sat in the chair this time, she told me how God had put one of her fellow hairdressers on her heart, who also didn’t believe in God, and how she was feeling led to continue to witness to her.
I left the salon that day doing the Praise Jesus dance in my heart (an expression I’ve stolen from Lysa T).
Who would have thought that all those years ago when I was pulling my hair out in frustration that it was actually a time of cultivation?
God was preparing the soil so I could continue in the role He placed me in 20 years before - to be an encourager for my friends walk with the Lord.
Isn’t our God wonderful? I’m so glad he has plans for me. I’m so happy for all the chiseling God was doing when I didn’t know why I had to go thru some of the “Junk”.
I’m so grateful that he has turned our times of tolerating each other into times of rejoicing and sharing our faith.
I just wonder how old I have to get before I quit underestimating the power of God.
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