What I Write About

I write about the infinite number of intersections between every day life and the good news of the God who has come to get us.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Knowing God's Will III

Often times when we're in critical places of making decisions, we wish God would just tell us, make it clear, what we're supposed to do. That happened to me once. Does that make me totally weird?

My now wife Kelly and I were dating long distance. We had just graduated from college and had just started dating for the fourth-ish time right before we graduated. I was starting on IV staff in Richmond, VA. She was in an intense ministry situation in an inner-city boarding school in Durham, NC. She lived in a house with four adults and approximately thirty kids.

I was up late. She was up early. We both were dealing with tons of transition. It was hard to catch time to really talk on the phone. So we would regularly meet in the middle: Denny's, exit 12, South Hill, VA. Hours and hours of bottomless cups of coffee and extremely average food.

About half through the year, after a meeting up at Denny's, I was driving home with tons of doubts and I decided to let God have it: "I don't know about this relationship, the time and effort and energy, our "fit" together, our different passions and gifts and loves. I just don't know if this is going to work. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know..."

And as I was letting God have it in the car with all my doubts and all of my "I don't know's" he spoke to me very clearly and said something very, very simple:

"I know."

That's all he said. He knew. He knew all my doubts. He knew all my fears. He knew her and he knew me and he knew what was to come.

And the question that left me with is the same one that we all have to deal with when it comes to our anxieties and concerns about the future: will we trust Him? Would I trust Him with all my questions? Will we trust Him with our concerns and doubts and desires?

You know what I did after I heard that voice? I turned on the radio, sang along all the way home--it was 1997, so probably Hootie and the Blowfish. And you know what? That was worship. For just a brief time, maybe an hour of my life, I trusted that God knew. And that was enough.

1 comment:

Marshall Benbow said...

Have really enjoyed your recent posts, bro.