Looking Fear in the Face

I am currently in Nashville, TN attending the National Youth Workers Convention. It is a 5 day event in which many youth leaders, volunteers, and pastors come to learn more about how to reach youth. The first seminar I attended was three and a half hours long. Apart fromt the length the seminar was excellent. At one point we went around the room looking at quotes to figure out which one was most true for us. I should say that this seminar was called 'The Leadership Lab." The whole thing focuses on how to be a better leader in your youth group and in life. Needless to say the quote that hit me the hardest was this, "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do." Eleanor Roosevelt.
We were then required to explain why this quote was most true for us. I said because that I've always felt like I can't be a youth pastor because I can't lead. I said I was scared to death of what I'm going to have to do. While this is true I'm going to expound on it a little bit.
For most of my high school life I was concerned with what I wanted to do, as most students are. I could never think of anything. It wasn't that I could or wanted to do so many different things, because I felt like I couldn't do anything. I've always been rather shy and reserved. These two things meant to me that I would never be in any sort of leadership position. Or if I was it was something that would take many years of ordinary work after college to be in some sort of leadership position. As I didn't know what I wanted to do though it was still difficult to see. Then, during my senior year I made the decision to become a youth pastor. And it was still some time before I realized what this meant. It meant I would be immediately put into a leadership position.
Now I have to look that fear in the face. I have to do the thing I think I cannot do. I don't have a choice. This is what God has called me to do and I am going to do it for all I am worth. Will it be any good? Absolutely. Will I fail? Definitely. Will I succeed when I'm broken? Yes. I am doing what I have been called to do and what I love to do. It's simply a matter if gritting my teeth, digging down and doing it. Will I need all the help I can get? Most definitely. Nevertheless, I will succeed and I will be the best youth pastor there is. Not because I have ideas of grandeur of what I will be. No, it will be because of what God chooses to do through me that will make me the best. and he will get all the glory for it because he is the one, the only one, who deserves it.