Listen like your life depends on it
God will speak to you if you’ll listen. Four years ago, a young man in California I’d never met named Joe Bunting read a blog post of mine and emailed me. In the post he’d read was this quote from Fredrick Buechner:In the year that King Uzziah died, or in the year that John
F. Kennedy died, or in the year that somebody you loved died, you go into the temple, if that is your taste, or you hide your face in the little padded temple of your hands, and a voice says, “Whom shall I send into the pain of a world where people die?” And if you are not careful, you may find yourself answering, “Send me.” You may hear the voice say, “Go.” Just go.A man’s life is full of all sorts of voices calling him in all sorts of directions. Some of them are voices from inside and some of them are voices from outside. The more alive and alert we are, the more clamorous our lives are. Which do we listen to? What kind of voice do we listen for?
Joe had graduated from college about a year before and was working a desk
job as an administrative assistant. He called himself a “professional
coffee maker.” His potential was barely being tapped, and he was
struggling to break out of the status quo.
job as an administrative assistant. He called himself a “professional
coffee maker.” His potential was barely being tapped, and he was
struggling to break out of the status quo.
His email to me read, “I got a sudden urge to get up, leave work, and start walking to Georgia. That’s not from God, right? What if it is?”
Yes Joe, it was. He didn’t walk to Georgia, but three years later, after first going around the world, Joe did drive his car here in the hopes of taking out my daughter Talia.
How could he know that for years Talia had asked me the question, “Daddy, are you praying for my husband?” How could he have seen her tears as she waited for her knight in shining armor to show up?
I believe the urge Joe felt four years ago was the direct answer to our prayers. God was speaking to him and Joe was listening as though his life depended on it.
Maybe it did.
I think our lives depend on our listening no less.
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This was written in perfect timing! God has been telling me “Go!” since January. I have asked Him where and He has continually told me “It doesn’t matter, it will just get you in motion and I will lead you from there.” I have been feeling like my life is at a stand still with no job in sight and unable to go back to school due to finances. I started praying about heading out that way and just asked God is it okay to go then looked through my email to find a link to today’s blog.
Seth, Good timing for me too! After a season or two of being broken for girls in bars and on the streets of Manila, we (Wipe Every Tear) are in the process of renting an apartment to be our first outreach home to love on and rescue these trafficked and precious girls.
Do we have everything planned and figured out? No way! But time is short, the need is there, and we are going to learn on the fly! We have identified out first Filipino staffer and HERE WE ARE LORD – SEND US.
Yes, God indeed speaks – and we are going for it!
Thanks for your encouraging words to all of us Seth.
i just tear up every time i read this!
Kenny,
Great to hear! We’re doing the same thing in Cambodia.
Think i need to recruit your prayers for God to bring me a husband who loves the Lord.
Amen, Judith! He invented romance. He gifts us with a vision for life together.
Mary Beth, I’ll pray for that special guy to swoop into your life.
I loved this story. Your point of listening to God with all we are worth was right on. But what struck me most about this story is that God is such a great, big Romantic. When we get hold of that it changes our lives.
He wants to bring Romance to our lives.
He wants to Romance all of us on a grand scale.
He wants to give us a lover’s glow so that all the world catches fire with the Romance of Him.
Love,
Judith