When the assignment is just too hard, here’s what God will do

By Dean Collins

What do you do when God hands you a hard, too hard, assignment? When I was younger my faith seemed strong, and I do not remember feeling especially fearful when God opened my eyes to do what some thought to be hard things. I was 21 when through prayer, scripture, and the encouragement of a couple of campus ministers who were 5-15 years my senior, I believed God was prompting me to start a campus ministry at Auburn University.

I sought counsel from a couple of well-respected pastors in Atlanta who also confirmed this assignment. One pastor, Jim Dyer of Southwest Christian Church, wrote a letter to over 300 other pastors in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, endorsing me and encouraging these pastors to encourage their missions committees to support this new ministry. In the letter, he gave my biographical information, such as it was: He had known me as a student youth minister during my four years of college and had worked with me in church camp two weeks each summer. I played the guitar, could sing, and was good with young people, etc.

Unfulfilled expectations

I mailed these 300-plus letters with anticipation of great support. I think four or five pastors wrote back saying they would pray about it and that a ministry in Auburn was needed. Two of those pastors invited me to speak at their church to present the ministry. One wrote a scathing letter back to Dyer asking basically if he had lost his mind. How could a 21-year-old, barely out of college, launch a new ministry at a major university? I was undereducated, he said, not experienced or mature enough, and he would not encourage anyone to support such an endeavor.

You would think that kind of response would have prompted me to throw in the towel and get a job at a local church or with an established campus ministry. But I fully believed that if God called, then God would provide. In the spirit of Jeremiah 32, I moved forward. “Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm!” the prophet had proclaimed. “Nothing is too hard for you.” And so, even though I was, in fact, inexperienced in starting a 501c3 religious organization at a public university, even though I had yet to set foot on the campus I wanted to serve, I had faith like Jeremiah’s.

Unanticipated challenges

What I didn’t know until we started was that there may be nothing too hard for God, but there are plenty of things too hard for me! If this ministry would make it, strong faith in God, hard work, and lots of prayer would be needed. I don’t remember exactly how many times I thought about quitting, but it was several, particularly in the first two or three years. But in faith and with the backing of a newly recruited board of directors, we moved forward. By the way, I didn’t know much about recruiting a board and I did a lot of knocking on doors, and looking up people in phone books ( no computers or internet searches back then). You did things person to person and slowly.

As I look back on these events I can see how God used rejection, difficult people, financial stress, and many other problems to deepen my dependency on him. I learned what has proved true in three start-ups and one turnaround where I have worked: We are never really sufficient for the things God calls us to do. We might have a good set of gifts, relationships, and experiences, but even with all of that, there come times of testing, unforeseen resistance, setbacks, spiritual attacks, economic downturns, and on and on. If we rely on our own resources, we will eventually burn out. But when we approach each assignment trusting that nothing is too hard for God, then he will give us strength and reveal a path forward even when the worst we can imagine happens.

We are never really sufficient for the things God calls us to do.

Jeremiah was told to buy property using his own money in a city that was under siege and would be destroyed by the powerful kingdom of Babylon. Yet in faith he did what God directed because God made a promise that in the end, decades later even, things would resolve for the good of God’s chosen people.

Unfailing provision

You may see the worst possible outcome coming in family, in business, in government, in the economy, or even on a global scale. But do we have faith to trust that nothing we can see is too big for God to get us through? For God to resolve? For God to restore? In times like these, we must choose to lean on God and trust his promises. We might not even get to see how it turns out, but we can trust that our faith demonstrated by our obedience will result in God using us in his grand story of restoration. He will take care of us today and provide for his kingdom now and forever.

I think as we get older, sometimes it is easier to have this kind of faith, and sometimes it seems harder because now we know enough to know how difficult things might get. Young and old alike have the same opportunity to be used by God to make a kingdom difference in the world, but it will require stepping forward in faith.

I can’t wait to see what God does next!

Your time with God’s Word
Jeremiah‬ ‭32‬:‭16‬-‭42‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Photo by Devon Divine at Unsplash.com

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