feeling intimidated

I have been feeling a little nervous and intimidated lately. We are in the process of moving from Asheville NC to Indianapolis IN, I have resigned my position as a denominational pastor for the vocation of chaplain to hospice patients and we are endeavoring to plant a church that is different than we have experienced so far. I am feeling intimidated.

I frequently look to the future and see my inability to accomplish the dreams that pop into my skull. I am not able to. That thought is hard. I hate failure. I have always been the person who errs on the side of safety rather than risk for the reason that I don't desire to fail. In fact, I hate it. Yet what we are doing now is a risk. It scares me to death, yet I am comfortable knowing that it is what God wants. I know I can't do it, yet I know it will come about.

Maybe that is where the freedom is. In accepting our inability. I am not talking about accepting our inability with low self esteem, rather with high self awareness. Awareness of who we are and more importantly, who God is. I think of Moses standing there first hearing God tell him that he desired for him to go to the most powerful man in the ANE and give him instructions to do something that would not be popular. Moses was incapable. God knew that, yet he still called him. Because he knew what he was going to do.

In the church I am leaving I have heard certain things said about their search for the next pastor. "We need someone with a strong personality"..."We need someone with extraordinary leadership capabilities"..."we need someone with great charisma". These statements are supported by all the Maxwellian church leadership ideas, but I wonder if what God really wants for a pastor to be is something different. What if what God really desires is not that someone be supremely competent but be totally surrendered to his competence.

I don't know. I just know I can't do it. If it is going to get done, I must be infused.