Do You Question Yourself?

I have a friend who I love like a brother; he may as well truly be part of my family. Perhaps you have someone like this in your life as well. This is someone I would do literally anything for, someone who I pray consistently for, someone who I trust implicitly to see God’s path for him and his ministry and he is one for whom I am always concerned about, always thinking about. Like I said, he’s like a brother to me.

Recently this friend was going through a job search, and entered into what turned out be a very intensive interview process, covering many more interactions than would normally occur for most jobs. My friend went to school to be in ministry, has served in ministry for a number of years formally, and then informally for the last several years. This job would give him the chance to be back into full-time ministry, though perhaps not in the traditional view we might think of.

And there is something interesting about my friend; everyone he comes into contact with immediately loves him, is immediately drawn to him and wants to be around him. This is a gift God granted my friend, and one he has used often to draw others to a real relationship with Jesus Christ. He has a huge heart for others, is capable of having true friendships with many, many people at one time, and is wired to be a true, servant-like spiritual leader. In short, he has what we would call a BIG heart.

After the course of interviews, my friend was offered the job. He decided he needed to pray about it. Pray about it??? After who knows how many interviews, for a job that fits him perfectly, that is something he has done for years, is trained in and is amazing at, he needs to pray about it more? In my head, and being able to view this from the outside, this was a slam dunk. To a great many of the people who saw his post on Facebook, this was a slam dunk. I suspect a fair number of them were thinking the same thing I was, which was that this job was a perfect fit in the truest sense of the word “fit”.

I even questioned him about it, asked why he was doubting himself? He said he just wanted to be “sure”. Sure? You’re a pastor, involved in ministry at these levels for years, are incredible at it and have a gift, and you aren’t certain yet? You feel the need for more prayer after all these interviews? Didn’t you pray about it before applying, before going through the many interviews? I was a little surprised, and then I realized, he’s just like the rest of us.

You see, this friend of mine isn’t perfect. Nobody is, of course, but when something is so obvious to so many and there seems to be hesitancy or confusion, it creates confusion for the rest of us. What’s wrong with him? Is he OK? What can I do to help? I suspect I wasn’t the only one who prayed hard for my friend to make what we felt was the obvious decision on this job for him.

But then it hit me. How much easier is it to see things from the outside than when you are right in the middle of it all? How simple is it to “know” you are making the right decisions, even if God has given you an insane number of clues, if your confidence in your abilities has been shaken, even just a little bit? I don’t know why my friend was lacking in this confidence or even if he felt he was, but I don’t doubt his confidence had been shaken, even just a little bit, by not being in ministry formally for some time, or by life, or by not working for a bit. I can vouch that, at least for men, if you don’t work for awhile, your confidence takes a real hit. You’re made to lead, to be the provider, and when that is taken away from you, it’s not easy.

I do know I could look back at my own decisions over time and easily find several similar situations, where God had sent signs to point me in one direction but I kept looking for other confirmation, for Him to just sit down next to me and say, “This is it. Do it.” I think we’re all in this situation perhaps more often than we’d like, and I think that’s the broader message.

I never doubted the abilities of my friend nor the direction I saw God sending him, but he wanted more assurance. I have often struggled making big decisions on things others may have seen well in advance, but I couldn’t make the decision faster due to something that caused hesitancy, for some reason, in trusting my own ability to read what God was telling me.

The message here is not that you shouldn’t hesitate to decide or that you should always strive for that perfect moment of assurance. In fact, if you’re waiting on that, your ability to understand it when it happens may not match up with how perfectly God has placed it in front of you. No, the message here is that God has given us many helpers, many people to lift us up, to pray for us, to aide us whenever we need something, when we need a friend, when we need a sounding board, when we need advice.

In business, it’s easy to see “paralysis by analysis” regularly. Sometimes we over-analyze things in our lives, too, but the beautiful thing in God’s world is that He provides others to help clear the fog, to pray for us, to help us in making the right decisions. This isn’t to say you need to wait on everything and seek input from others for everything you do. But a wise person seeks input on life’s bigger decisions, especially spiritual ones, because a wise person knows that God has planted many people in our lives to help meet our needs.

God is a good God. Loving, merciful, caring, and supremely capable of directing us on the right path, no matter how fast or slow we are to decide things. He’s given us people everywhere in our lives to be His emissaries, and we’d be foolish not to tap into that love and knowledge.

Hmmm, when you think of it that way, it seems so easy, doesn’t it?

~ by relevantedge on September 30, 2012.