Christ Our Shepherd Lenten Devotion Series 2023
Possibilities: Trusting God to Use Me
31 March 2023
Today’s devotional was written by Kendra Milburn.
“All things are working together for my good.”
Romans 8:28
Father, slow our minds and open our hearts to You and Your plan. Please remind us not to get too comfortable and embrace the change You bring our way. You are always preparing us, Lord. Thank You for the opportunities You present to do Your work here. Amen.
As most of you do, I watch my husband run from one end of a room to another, from the Sanctuary to the Fellowship Hall, up and down the stairs, in the ceiling, under the stage, and everything in between. It’s funny because these roles were reversed a few short years ago. I was running from meeting to meeting, city to city, shoot to shoot, never sitting still long while my husband, Brad, was a full-time Dad to our daughter, Olivia, and master of everything under our roof.
Brad and I met doing theatre, musicals actually. He was the Nathan Detroit to my Adelaide, the Mack to my Mabel, the Tony to my Maria. We had a lot of fun building dreams of what our life could be like together as young, twenty-somethings. Then, as it tends to do, life happened. We moved to New York, and while auditioning, I landed a marketing job at a TV network and Brad went to work for an entertainment law firm. We were living, but we weren’t thriving. We certainly weren’t pursuing the dreams we chased a few short years prior.
Life then took us to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and finally, Atlanta. Somewhere along the way, I got lost. I was working fifteen to twenty-hour days creating marketing campaigns for tv and movies, climbing the ladder. There was no time for friends, no time for hobbies, no time for me. Looking back now, I thought I was thriving. I thought I was chasing the dream. And I was! It just wasn’t mine.
From the moment we stepped inside the walls of COS, our lives began to change. David Beecher charmed us into joining the choir, Bill Porter pulled Brad into what was his tech team at the time, and Olivia, our homeschooled daughter, found a community. We all did. Bill and Sandra successfully pulled Brad and me down the hall where you now see us leading worship, and that tech team is now Brad’s.
Listening to Pastor Weber preach about embracing change and not getting too comfortable a few weeks ago really struck a chord in me. When we opened ourselves up to God’s plan, he placed us exactly where we needed to be. The music and community we’ve found at COS have been a source of salvation for us. Our years of music training and performing taught us how to be present with the music and cut right through an auditorium to connect to others through it. We had no idea that God would use that connected experience we had with music so many years ago to help us be vessels for His word. I thank God every single day for bringing us back to music, back to the church, and most of all, back to Him. Now, we’re thriving.