When God Uses NS

Listen to this article

Early Riser, For Once
Good morning! I have always not been a morning person (which explains why I am always late for work, 95% of the time). But interestingly, I found myself waking up automatically at 7.30am this morning :) Maybe I have gotten used to waking up early, maybe I have gotten enough mental rest from work the whole week or maybe I am just excited to come online to just blog about my day yesterday or maybe it is a combination of all 3 factors.

God Uses my NS Training
Anyway, have rounded up my training at the army camp yesterday and we got to learn skills for conducting a defuse and debrief during critical incidents. It really wasn't easy but then managed to get by somehow and the role play did make things interesting. Now that the psychological training is over, on hindsight, I realised how I have learnt many things. I thank God for the training which has helped me to:

• refresh my social work skills
• learn about military psychology and how to handle critical incidence, in theory
• get some rest from work
• learn some valuable skills in facilitation through the various role plays as well as observing others; picking up so many things that I can do better
• regain some confidence in facilitation as I realise, during the role plays, that I do have some skills
• see the power of common purpose (of booking out early) and how it unites people
• learn about training delivery (I always like to go to workshops to not only learn but observe the trainers and how they deliver their training)
• experience being in an army camp
• remind me that I had experience and have been through and survived some incidents too
• observe leadership at work in SAF
  

And I chose to believe that this training is somewhat not incidental. As I made my way to cell yesterday, I realised I was not that jittery about leading cell yesterday. There was just this peace and confidence that "if I can do it during the training why not now?" kind of feeling. I believe and thank God for interjecting this training at this point in time, to affirm me and help me pick up the skills for leading cell through the role plays and skills training during my in-camp training. Who would have thought that God can even use a national service training to teach me about cell leadership?

God Blesses Cell Meeting
Yesterday's cell group meeting went superbly well. I have came only prepared with 2 questions (as compared to a whole list of questions and references in the past) and I remember praying to God for Him to take over the session. In the end, I thank God that the discussion took off and went on to a deeper level, with people participating :)

The Path was Paved...
I was even more pleasantly surprised when I found that the topic (which was on volunteering your service for God) even somewhat, surprisingly opened up the opportunity for the 5 of us to talk about the situation our cell is in, towards the end of the session. However, it wasn't as emotional charged as the last time we had a frank chat about it. And I thank God for the opportunity to also share my struggles openly with them. Yesterday, I openly shared about (i) my struggles with cell leadership and how I had made the decision to step down 4 times so far, (ii) my struggles with caring for members and my personality of being an introvert, (iii) the pain and burden I feel each time I see someone not walking close to God and (iv) that I needed help from them to make this work.

All these, including the "timeliness" of the NS training and also my forgetting to call up a visitor to visit our cell this week (so in the end, our cell can talk openly about cell developments) just goes to show me how much God is in control sometimes. I have realised that every single step of the way so far has been guided by God and just as He guided me in my work ministry and so, at this point in time, I believe He will guide me through this season of cell leadership.

I thank God that my members seem to understand and agree to help me out in reaching out to the people who are seldom coming to cell, to talk to them. I thank God that I was interacting with my members well yesterday and we were even laughing along happily during supper :)

Thank you Lord!