A Life of Faith

"Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led,” writes Oswald Chambers. “But it does mean loving and knowing the One who is leading. It is literally a life of faith, not of understanding and reason – a life of knowing him who calls us to go.”

I am going. I am starting a new job at a new church. I am (well technically, "we are") leaving our church and joining this new church. It hasn't been an easy decision. While most friends understand it and know and love us enough to have an idea of our motivations, people still ask, "Why?" It's not an easy story to tell, because there are lots of little stories that led us down this path.

The short version is "Our pastor and friend left. When we knew he was leaving, we stopped to evaluate my job and our service and God began to call us elsewhere."

Maybe a metaphor would help: "When we tried to unpack the overstuffed emotional baggage that comes from being deeply involved in a church that is going through years of 'transition' and struggles, we found that we just needed a whole new suitcase. The old stuff in there doesn't even fit us anymore."

My husband in exasperation has said, "Sometimes you just need to change churches after 16 years! There doesn't have to be a big overly-spiritualized reason!"

The faith side of it is I cracked the door open in a moment of worry and grief about the coming changes and tossed out a resume. And I feel like God flung the door wide open and said "come on, we're going somewhere and it's going to be big and scary and exciting and a lot of people won't understand, but I'm in it and that's what matters."

And after much wrestling, procrastinating, whining, and praying, there was a peace that settled in. I hadn't really even said "yes, I'll go with you on this" in my head, but my heart was already there. There was peace.

At one point in the wrestling process, I sat on the front porch step while my husband worked in the yard on a gorgeous late August day and I felt the Holy Spirit. Now if you know me at all, you know I am generally more a thinker than an emotional/feeler kind of person in this area, but I'm telling you I felt Him. A breeze and the sun and then the quiet whisper saying to my soul "It's going to be alright. Trust me." I hadn't decided yet, but God was with me in the tension, reminding me that whether or not I understood or knew where I was going, He was with me. He would be the one calling me.

Most of the people at our church are staying. The most amazing and encouraging thing is that I've literally heard the exact same words coming from many people: "God isn't telling me to go, so we are staying." Listening to what God is saying, whether it is "stay" or "go"--following Him when you don't know where you're being led--that is what it means to live a life of faith. May we be gracious and encourage each other to keep our eyes on the "One who is leading".