Obedience, a reward?

I have been asked to speak at a local MOPS group. The leader of the group has asked that I share my testimony or the meaning behind Living My Life on Purpose. I am always so excited to share my passion with others and thought to myself that this would be an easy speaking engagement…’how hard can it be to share my testimony and what my purpose for living is all about?’ HA!! As with past speaking engagements…God really does some hard core character building that is ‘topic specific’ and very purposeful leading up to the speaking engagement. And it usually takes me a few days to catch up and see how He is bringing purpose to it all! And to be honest…this time I am not sure I will ever catch up! I have been working on the session for a few weeks now and was trying to build it around my life verse…because its my life verse…my testimony so that should all work out just fine…right? Well it wasn’t working…so I took a few days and went down a path He led me on to start reading about people in the Bible and the purpose God brought into their life stories. Wow…I was feeling like I had hit a gold mine! There are some people with purpose in the Bible.

"Nichole your life verse means something to you because its what I brought to you to bring purpose to your life" –God

"Yeah and I think its great and I think I need to share it because I will be sharing about my life and the purpose You brought to it" –me

"Nichole are you sharing to talk about yourself, or to bring people to me?" -God

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28

This is the verse He has covered my days with for the past week. Everywhere I turn, this verse is shining bright. I am on a Bible Reading Plan and it was "scheduled" for me to read, a friend lent me a book The Atonement Child by Francine Rivers a very powerful book about bringing purpose to a very difficult situation in which the author uses Romans 8:28 to end the book, in our Sunday School class we are doing the Chasing Daylight study by Erwin McManus and that was the verse he used to share about uncertainty. And just yesterday God asked me to step out in obedience to put myself into a very uncomfortable situation.

"Really why am I here, what am I supposed to be getting out of this?"-me

"Nichole you are not here for yourself, you are here to comfort." –God

For in ALL THINGS, God is working to bring good!