Benched

"Each time he said, 'My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.' So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me." 2 Corinthians 12:9

Benched. We know what this means in sports terms. The coach keeps you on the sidelines, and instead of participating in the game, you are watching everyone else get a piece of the action. I experienced this while playing college basketball. I was benched because I didn’t perform well enough. I was benched because I had ankle surgery and couldn’t physically perform. I was benched because I turned the ball over. And, as you would expect, each time I was benched, I did not enjoy it near as much as being a part of the game.

However, all that time on the bench in college basketball didn’t fully prepare me for last fall when I woke up one morning feeling like God had benched me in life. I work for a Christian sports ministry called Athletes in Action, and I had recently gotten engaged to a Mongolian named Ebi. My organization was very supportive of our relationship, but they strongly suggested I spend some significant time in Ebi’s country before we were married so that I could better understand the culture and language I was marrying into. I agreed this sounded like a wise idea, and they reassigned me for a four-month project in Mongolia.

I moved to Mongolia expectant and excited to do God’s work in my fiancé’s home country, but when I got there, I realized things weren’t exactly as I had hoped. I didn’t speak the language, I didn’t understand the culture or why people did what they did, and I couldn’t do ministry very easily with the language barrier. I remember looking out of my balcony at the city and saying to God, “I’m a missionary, and there is a country full of people out there dying without you. I feel helplessly unable to do anything about it.”

I was frustrated. I was discouraged. What was my calling to ministry or my identity if I couldn’t work or perform? What was the point of it all if I just spent the majority of my time in my apartment alone and waiting for Ebi to finish work so that I could have a native speaker to help me go somewhere or do something? Why did God bring me here?

As I cried out to God with these questions, He spoke to my Spirit in His still, small voice that brings peace that surpasses understanding. He said those people out there dying without Him were His responsibility to save, not mine. My responsibility is to surrender and obey, no matter what that may look like. I couldn’t carry that load when I didn’t have the language or cultural skills to reach them in the four months that I was here. (The whole point of me being here was to become more equipped in language and culture in the first place!)

He said that my time here was for a different purpose. He wanted me to discover my identity in Him, not in my performance or my work. He wanted to strip me of the achieving and performing -- the approval I thought I needed -- and He wanted to show me Himself in that apartment where I spent most of my time by myself. Many of these lessons were the same things He started teaching me several years ago as I sat on the bench in college basketball. Clearly I didn’t fully get it the first few times around, and in His ever-persistent grace, He was still trying to teach me.

All my striving, all my performing meant nothing. It was what Christ had done for me, His grace and mercy alone, that mattered. I remember in those lonely apartment-sitting moments thinking God loves me enough to drop me in a random country where I can’t speak the language, can’t even take a taxi by myself, and where I struggle to do ministry in even the simplest of ways just to show me how meaningless my striving is…  to show me Himself and teach me to stop focusing on doing and start focusing on Him. It really is all about what HE has done. Not me.

Life and identity isn’t found in striving or doing. It’s actually found in resting in His grace. Isn’t that relieving? We can stop doing, sit on the bench and rest. Sit on the bench long enough to catch our breath, long enough for our injuries and wounds to heal, and long enough to let go of all of the pressure to perform and get everything done. (And long enough to realize that it isn’t our game to win in the first place.) He promises His grace is enough by itself without all the stuff we try to add to it.

What are you trying to add to His grace today? Stop and rest a while on the bench. Let God take over. He is the one who has been calling the shots this whole time anyways.