God doesn’t always give us a sign.
If you know me or have read any of my blog, you probably know that following signs from God was “my thing.” My schtick. God gives me a crazy sign, I pray about it for a while, then I follow God into the next adventure in ministry.
It’s how I ended up working at church, becoming a pastor, going to Japan, and moving to Santa Ana.
Maybe seeing signs became too easy for me. Maybe it made me complacent. Maybe I was finding too much of my identity in it.
I followed signs out of Japan and into the role of children’s pastor at my old home church in Santa Ana. Surely, that meant I belonged here, I reasoned. That’s why I was caught off-guard when, just a little over my one-year anniversary, I was encouraged to pray about finding another job.
Disconcerted, I needed help processing what was happening. I confided in a few close friends, one of whom asked me, “Didn’t you discern that God called you to that role?”
I replied that I believed He had. “And do you discern that He is calling you to leave the role now?”
I replied that I hadn’t. “Then you can’t just quit because someone’s pushing you to. You should only leave when God tells you to.”
What he said made sense to me. A former mentor once told me that if God calls you strongly to something, you shouldn’t stop or leave until God calls you just as strongly to do so.
I prayed for discernment on whether or not I should find another job, but I wasn’t perceiving any sort of response from God, so I decided to dig in my heels, push back against the pressure to resign, and fight to stay in the role.
It wasn’t fun, but it was what I believed I needed to do.
I confided in another friend about the stress and struggles I was facing as I tried to fulfill a sense of calling. I was taken aback when this friend suggested that the leader I was in conflict with was ordained by God and therefore was discerning and executing God’s will.
Did that mean that I was wrong? Had I been discerning God’s will incorrectly all this time?
My world swiftly unraveled.
If I had been wrong about leaving Japan to come to Santa Ana, maybe I had been wrong about going to Japan in the first place. Maybe I had put my wife and children in harm’s way by bringing them overseas because of my mistakes. Maybe I don’t hear God after all. Maybe I shouldn‘t have become a pastor or entered ministry, period.
“This is what happens when you follow God,” whispered a disturbing voice. “Ten years of your life, and what do you have to show for it? Your career is over. You have no savings. You have no home of your own. You gave up long-term opportunities in Japan to come here. You lost your standing with your denomination to return to your church, and now, you’re even losing that church. Fool.”
Satan was hitting me hard with these taunts, but deep down, I recognized them as lies. I knew that every good thing that ever happened to me was by the grace of God. I remembered all that He had done to intervene in my life ever since I committed to seeking Him. I knew in my very being that “He will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Why, then, was God seemingly silent during such a dark time?
Maybe He wasn’t. Maybe I had to reframe my thinking on what was going on.
Maybe it wasn’t a case of one person hearing God correctly and the other being mistaken. Maybe we were both discerning correctly – I remembered the account of the conflict between the Apostle Paul and the prophet, Agabus, who were both convinced that they knew God’s will (Acts 21).
Who was right and who was wrong? Were they both right–or were they both wrong? I posted my thoughts on when Christians disagree as I processed this.
I resigned myself to the possibility that perhaps neither of us was wrong. Fine. I still didn’t know what that meant for my work and my family.
About a month into this conflict, I was on my way to a regular silence and solitude outing with my children‘s ministry team when I had to drive through a roundabout in Irvine. ”I hate roundabouts,” I silently grumbled.
That’s when God finally broke the silence and spoke to me about my situation.
“You hate roundabouts because you like intersections, don‘t you? Intersections are clearly marked. There are lines, lanes, and arrows telling you where to go. You stop when the light is red and go when the light is green. You prefer intersections because you like to just wait for the signs.”
Ouch. Convicted. I do like signs because they’re easy to follow.
“But you won’t always see signs,” the Holy Spirit impressed upon me. “You won’t always be in an intersection. Sometimes, you’re in a roundabout: there are no signs, so you have to see the direction everyone else is going, yield to traffic, navigate your way through without crashing, and know when to exit.”
I felt as though God were giving me permission to yield to church leadership and make my exit.
Filled with a newfound sense of peace, I began to make my way out of the roundabout.
