Why does God give signs sometimes?
Our two-year assignment in Ofunato was coming to an end. Though I thought God would have us stay there longer, we were surprised to begin discerning a call to Santa Ana, California.
What’s the relationship between Santa Ana and Ofunato?
I have no idea.
But I learned that it’s not my place to always understand what God is doing. My role is to simply obey.
I might seem like the kind of guy who acts impulsively and drops everything when I see a crazy sign, but this is far from the truth. I’m actually very cautious and hesitant to make any hasty moves. This might be why God gives me signs to spur me into action – He knows I’m the type of person who thinks too hard before making a decision.
I’m like the dork at an eatery who spends 10 minutes studying the menu before deciding what to order, then ends up ordering something else completely and regretting it afterwards.
So even with God giving Soo and me multiple signs to go to Santa Ana, I was leery of packing up to move halfway around the world – again – without one more confirmation.
I asked God to confirm the calling to Santa Ana by showing me a sign. A visual one, like Gideon and the fleece (Judges 6).
The word I got was “license plate” – specifically, a plate reading “10-10” – the nickname/street number of our home church, which had recently relocated to Santa Ana. I kept my eyes peeled for this set of plates for months, but didn’t see a single one.
Then, in March 2015– just three months before the end of our time in Ofunato– I preached at the church we served at, and as part of the message, I shared how God once spoke to me through a license plate.
The service started at 3:00pm and ended after 5:00pm. Soo needed some groceries to prepare dinner, so after the service, we drove from church to the local supermarket. Since our boys had fallen asleep in the car, I waited with them while Soo dashed through the rain and into the store.
I was exhausted from preaching. It was dark and raining outside. The boys were asleep.
With nothing to do, I decided to take a nap with them. I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep to the pitter-patter of the springtime rain bouncing off the roof of our mission van.
After a few minutes of failing to fall asleep, I got a strong nudge to “open your eyes right now.” I did, and my eyes landed on the front license plate of a car about to drive past us. (In Japan, you usually back into parking spaces, so I was facing outwards.)
The plate number was 10-10.
I squinted for a better look to make sure I was seeing it correctly through the rain.
The digits on the front plate read 10-10, all right. And as the car passed by, I got a look at the rear license plate, confirming that the car’s license number was indeed 10-10.
After months of being on the lookout for a 10-10 car, we finally saw one, and from that point on, we would see a number of them– so many that it became a running joke in our family. Once, we were cut off by cars with 10-10 plates twice in one day. Another time, we were driving through a lonely rice field in the Iwate countryside when my youngest son said, “I want to see a 10-10 car.” I told him that it would be unlikely, as we were in the middle of nowhere.
A car soon approached from the opposite direction on the narrow road, and what do you think its license plate numbers were?
Yup. It wasn’t even funny anymore.
God doesn’t always speak to me clearly. More often than not, I hear nothing and must live by faith, like anyone else. But when I do get a “clear” sign, it’s usually when God is calling me to take a significant step in ministry, such as when I got confirmation to enter full-time ministry or go on missions in Japan.
We were confident that God was calling us to leave Japan and return to our home church, which was now in Santa Ana.
But where would we live? And what would I do for a living?
When God calls you to something, He takes care of the details.
