Interactions with God #107
God’s will. I find it interesting how we struggle with whether or not we are in God’s will for our lives. If we are actively living in sin, well, it is kind of obvious that we are not. But what about our decisions? How do we know if we choose the way God wants us to go? Simple really. You can know at any point in your life that you are in God’s will. “Really???” Yup, really.
Say that you are facing a fork in the road. You can choose to go right or go left. Which way do you go? Which way is best? For one who loves Jesus Christ, all you have to do is ask Him. “Right! Like it is really that simple.” Yup, it is. You see, God is our Father. He is THE Father. If you ask Him, according to His word, He will guide you. Have you given Jesus lordship over your life? If so, then when you ask Him, the only thing left for you to do is to trust His response.
Ok, back to the fork in the road. You have a choice, go right or go left. At the fork, you ask God for His guidance. His will in this decision. Nothing happens. The sky doesn’t part and a voice doesn’t boom down from the heavens. Angels do not appear and point the way. He doesn’t send a prophet. You don’t get a thought, word or a dream. The scriptures don’t have any direction either. So, what do you do? You decide. You decide based on the information He has already given you. “Hummm, so, the road on the right looks a little less traveled. It looks like a much better road on the left.” Then you move. You go left.
So, heading on down the road that you picked, it suddenly becomes rather difficult. There are scary animals attacking. There are bandits. The weather has turned bad and now it is muddy. You get attacked by bees, while fighting through briars. Yea, OK, this road stinks. Worse yet, you can see from your vantage point, that the other road, the one that didn’t look so good to start with, has birds chirping, women dancing and gold paved streets!
This is where most, who don’t really know God well, say “I missed it! God wanted me to go the other way!” Does that even make any sense in light of the scriptures? Not really, no. The problem here is in the thinking that God always wants you to be happy. That is garbage. God wants you to grow and that often takes a difficult path. You can easily know that you are exactly where God wants you to be. How? Simply because you did that one thing before you made the choice. You asked for Him to guide you.
Is God not a good father? Of course He is. Have you not seen in your life where He has prevented you from a certain direction? I have, many times. We need to wake up and realize that God is really in control, REALLY in control.
So, your marriage is not so happy now. If you asked for God’s guidance in the marriage decision, you are exactly where He wants you to be. So, your career has taken a dive. Yup, again, you are where God wants. Of course you can work to make each situation better, but if you can’t do so without breaking God’s law, then well…deal with it. Sorry, no divorce option. No abortion option. You can try to find a new job, but no, you cannot kill your boss. This is called walking in faith.
We sold our house. Now we had to decide where to live. We asked God, as always, what do to next. For all my moves, up until this one, He actually did something to point the way. This time, He left the direction up to what we knew.
We couldn’t buy another house in Phoenix. We could have just rented again, but we had come to realize that for my job role, Phoenix was no longer a very good place to be. You see, because of the high tech downturn, the sales territories had expanded. When I first moved to Phoenix, my territory was Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico. Within the first year, it had grown to Arizona, New Mexico and all the states above to the border of Canada. At iPlanet, my territory was everything in the west. In each job, as the years progressed, my territory had expanded. The problem, in 2006, was that when a company was looking for a candidate to fill a sales role, they wanted them to be living in a central city within the territory they would cover. For the West, it was San Francisco. For the Central Region it was Dallas or Chicago. For the East Coast, it was NY, Boston, Atlanta or Bethesda. So, for me to get a decent job again, we needed to move to one of these cities. Based on our financial situation and my terrible aversion to the cold, Dallas was the best option.
On the day of the move, we had to be out of the house by 5pm. We couldn’t risk the cost of movers, so we rented a truck and packed it ourselves. We didn’t get much help. Only two came from the Anthem church. A guy named Gary and the pastor of the church. He came because his wife was mad at him for forgetting to announce our move on the prior Sunday. Yes, that was what he said. Ron Stine was there, but Ron was always there when we needed help or friendship. One of Martha’s friend’s came too, Dulce Shimkus. She was the one who help me get the job at the golf course.
We barely got the truck loaded in time. We had packed what we could fit and gave our helpers what wouldn’t. At around 5pm, we hit the road on our way to Dallas, trusting that God’s plan was, as always, still in play. We did this with hope. The upswing in the labor pain cycle. Hope that now, God would make things work.
We had a fork in the road. We had prayed for His guidance and we made the decision. We picked a direction that looked best. We went left…yea, lots and lots of bees…