I’m standing in a sea of orange pews, eyes closed, arms stretched wide…
Speak to me, Lord.
MOVE.
Tell me what you want me to do.
MOVE.
What do you mean, “move”? You can speak to me here, now. I know you can, so I don’t understand why I need to move.
MOVE.
Ok, fine. This is silly. I don’t understand why moving would make any difference, but, fine. I’ll move.
(Has the Lord ever given you a simple instruction, but because it didn’t make sense to you, you argued or didn’t listen? Maybe didn’t obey? Maybe wrote it off as something else?)
I move out from the pew and start making my way to the back of the worship center. Halfway back, I quit watching my feet and look up. My eyes immediately land on a middle schooler in the back row. She’s crying – hard. Forgetting all about the internal conversation we were just having, I run over to her. Once I reach her, I ask her if she is hurt at all. She begins crying even more and between sobs, says, “I prayed for you! I asked God to send me someone so that I would know He is real.”
Oh, my heart! Talk about being humbled in a lesson of obedience! I let out the air in my lungs I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and I hugged that girls’ neck while we covered each other in our tears. I couldn’t believe God had spoken to me, basically saying, “Move… Just do this one thing, that’s all I ask. Can you do that? It’s not hard… Just, move. You say you want more, so move.” I told her that I was praying for her too. (I just didn’t know she was what I was praying for!)
I shudder to think of how that girl might have felt had I not listened to the Lord and moved that night. It didn’t make any sense in the moment, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had to do it. It wasn’t going to cost me much either, maybe some of my pride? But there was definitely a battle of will that night.
I feel Pastor Choco de Jesus puts it perfectly when he says, “Understanding can wait; obedience cannot.” Many times we want to have all the answers and everything figured out before we leap. But, where is the faith or trust in that? You may challenge me and say, “Its called, ‘being smart’.” I get that, I do. I’m not saying just run and leap into anything before assessing. I think there is a healthy amount of risk assessment that has to happen, but the Lord needs to be a part of that. Figure out what would you be sacrificing, and in the long-term, if the cost is worth the risk? Maybe even the dream? And I’m telling you, there will always be a cost… Maybe that’s what we are afraid of? Not knowing the cost?
What I am saying, is that sometimes God stirs something inside and we want Him to meet us where we’re at and speak to us. We want, want, want… But at what cost? At the cost of another? At the cost of us being moved by something? Being forever changed? At knowing Him more? At the cost of someone’s salvation? Sometimes I think we’re scared to seek Him on our own behalf because we’re afraid of what we may see or hear. Most of the time when God has spoken to me, where I have heard that still small voice, have been in moments when I have prayed for myself. It sounds selfish, but it’s incredibly humbling. Its submitting, which is not necessarily common practice in American culture. It tends to just be easier if we focus all our prayers on other people and other events, then we don’t have to think about how God may actually be wanting to change or use us. We tend to think, ‘If everyone else can just have a great God encounter, than that would make MY life so much better.’ But, what if YOU getting out of your OWN way, would do that? I would challenge you to pray for yourself. Pray that God would challenge you, speak to you, move you. And pray that you would have the courage to step out in obedience, while you may lack the understanding. You could find that you are the exact answer to someone’s prayer.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55: 8-9 NIV
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