Ever feel like this? I know I have. When I was 18 I started interning at my church. It was an unpaid internship and I had no  idea what to expect out of the behind the scenes work at a church. For almost a year the biggest responsibility I had was washing pitchers of water and organizing bins for youth group. That’s what everyone dreams of when they think of working at a church, right?

“God is more concerned about developing your potential than you are!”

I would sit in meetings and hear my mentor delegate “significant” tasks to the rest of the team only to end with looking at me and saying, “Bubs, organize the bins and wash the pitchers.” After two months of that, I had enough. So when my mentor left for his 8 week sabbatical, I e-mailed him telling him I quit. I didn’t sign up to work for free and wash pitchers.

He got me in contact with another mentor and had him talk to me. He said, “Bubs, have you prayed about this?” Of course I hadn’t. He said, “Give God a chance to speak to your heart, if you come back and still don’t want to, then quit.” God had one chance – if he didn’t speak to me in my devotions, it was over. I opened to Isaiah 49:3.4:

³ He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, and you will bring me glory.” ⁴ I replied, “But my work seems so useless! I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose.Yet I leave it all in the Lord’s hand;I will trust God for my reward.”

This verse changed my life forever. I felt like my work was useless, done for nothing, and for no purpose. YET…I leave it in God’s hands – I trust Him for my reward.  I developed this mentality and decided to stick with the internship.

One Thing Leads to Another

For an entire year, I set up bins faithfully every week. At the end of the year, I got asked to give my first offering. I started getting more responsibility. I interned a second year and at the end of my second year, I got asked to speak for the first time ever. Which led to more speaking engagements, more responsibility, and eventually 4 years after I interned, I got hired on staff at my church.

What Would Have Happened if I Would Have Quit Because I thought Everything I did was Pointless?

I wouldn’t be writing this, I wouldn’t be on staff, I probably wouldn’t be living for God. My Conclusion? God has you where you are for a reason, for your development, and if you’ll learn to trust Him for your reward instead of people, in His timing, He will promote you and allow you to do great things for Him, but first, you have to be faithful in the things that seem absolutely worthless.

Over the holiday break I read this book by Donald Miller. Then I read his new year post and was inspired. Donald talks about the stories we write with our lives. He said this in his book:

“The ambitions we have will become the stories we live. If you want to know what a person’s story is about, just ask them what they want. If we don’t want anything, we are living boring stories.” -Don Miller

I’ve come to recognize that most people who are doing things with their lives that others envy, do them on purpose. They write their own stories. They set a goal, go after it, and have a story to tell after they accomplish it.

My question to you is, what stories do you want to tell at the end of 2010?

Maybe you want to:

• Run a marathon
• Travel somewhere that you’ve never been
• Take up biking
• Read 25 books
• Serve people less fortunate than you on a consistent basis
• Mentor people younger than you
• Get mentored by a great leader
• Go to the Superbowl

I don’t know what your desires and ambitions are. What I do know is that the only way you’ll write a stories worth talking about, is by writing them on purpose.

Take a day with your calendar and a journal and write out what you’d love to do this year (even if it seems outrageous) and make a plan to do it. Be specific – set a date, and go after it.

What stories do you want to write?