God’s Direction

Last week, I wrote about “God’s Radical Love,” and the week before, I wrote about “God’s Promises..” If God loves us and has promised us something, what do we do with it? While we can use our creativity and dream directions for the future, our best course involves seeking God’s direction. What does God want us to do with the sense of being loved and promised a future?

When we seek God’s direction, the challenge becomes discerning God’s voice from our own. Each one of us, just like everyone else, has opinions, and we are naturally susceptible to hearing our own voice and conflating it with the divine. For example, I love seeing new places and meeting new people, so if I hear God saying, “Go to St. Croix and preach my good news,” I had better be sure it is really God saying to go to a beautiful Caribbean Island with fantastic scuba diving and sailing. (N.B., I’m aware that God hasn’t called me to St. Croix, but I did have a wonderful vacation there in March).

In Judges 6:36-40, Gideon wanted to make sure he understood what God was telling him. He thought he understood God to be telling him to lead the Israelite troops to defeat the Midianite and Amalekite invaders. Gideon blew his trumpet and gathered troops. However, he wanted to be sure he was hearing God’s direction and not his own desire. When a foreign power invades, the natural reaction is to fight back. I can imagine Gideon wanting to hear God say, “Drive out the Midianites and Amalekites!”

To make sure it was God’s direction he was following, he prayed and asked God to confirm the directions. He said to God, “I am going to lay a fleece of wool on the threshing-floor; if there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will deliver Israel by my hand, as you have said” (Judges 6:37). It was so.

Once more, Gideon wanted to confirm the voice he heard was the Lord’s, so he “set his fleece before the Lord” a second time. “Then Gideon said to God, ‘Do not let your anger burn against me, let me speak one more time; let me, please, make trial with the fleece just once more; let it be dry only on the fleece, and on all the ground let there be dew.’” (Judges 6:39). It was so.

As we look to the future, we may feel that we know where God is leading us. As Baptists, we speak with a collective voice, recognizing the priesthood of all believers. Where is God leading University Baptist Church? What’s next for us?

This is the point where my ‘On Watch’ column moves from the unidirectional distribution of my thoughts to a dialogical question about the future. You get to respond. What is the Holy Spirit saying to you? Don’t keep it a secret. Let me know and we can “set our fleece before the Lord” together.