Letting God fill in the gaps

One of the lessons God taught me through the retreat experience, before we even got to the retreat, was that of his ability to fill in the gaps of my inadequacy, assuming that I'm following his plan.

In my last entry, I mentioned an "e-prayer" I got from one of the other core team members shortly after my Tuesday evening touch from God. Turned out that my prayer request ended up sparking an awesome "e-prayer" meeting on our core team's discussion group, with virtually everyone chiming in. It was pretty awesome, in that it became very clear that our hearts were being focused on what God had in mind for us, and that God was using what had been meant for evil to bring good about, both in my life and for our team.

However. what also grew out of that prayer time was the revelation that about half of the team was (or at least had been) down on the plan to fast during the retreat. You see, we had a number of first time fasters, and so there was not much in the way of an understand of what we were doing, and what the purpose was for it. And, retrospectively, I never really talked about that with the team.

The reason for that was rather simple - I first fasted when I was a teenager in youth group, and have fasted many times since. I won't say that fasting is easy for me, but it's not a big deal for me at all. I've been through it, seen how God has used it, not had any really bad experiences, etc. At this point in my life, if I'm feeling led to fast, or if someone else ask me to join them in fasting for something, its just something I do and don't think a whole lot about. Since it wasn't a big deal to me, I didn't really anticipate it being a big deal for anyone else. Of course, it was easy for me to forget that the first time I did it, it was a big deal. So, not having a serious conversation with the team about it was a significant oversight on my part, one which left unaddressed could have really de-railed the trip.

Fortunately, as I've said, God is more than happy to fill in the gaps for our inadequacy when we're walking in his will. What also came out in that "prayer meeting", and the following discussion, was the extent to which God had already been working on those who confessed to having bad attitudes. That, coupled with a bit of follow-up on my part, created a much different dynamic than I might have otherwise expected under the circumstances. I won't say I had the most enthusiastic group of fasters ever, but I had a very obediant (to God, not to me) group, and as I'm learning more and more these days, that's really all that counts in the grand scheme of things.