There are times in life when we need to hear from God. There’s no substitute for patience and waiting in the pursuit of hearing from the Lord, but sometimes we need to know, and we need to know urgently. I believe God brings us to these points of desperation in order to teach us the power of praying through.
We are all faced with very important decisions at different points in our life that are weighty. Certain decisions will alter the very course of our lives. And we don’t want to mess it up! We need to know what the Lord wants us to do.
Usually, the process of discerning God’s will involves praying about it, talking with others about it, and thinking about it. This is all good, of course, but let’s be honest, sometimes we do all that, and we still aren’t sure what the Lord wants. We dribble drabble along in limbo just hoping that maybe someday the Lord will make it clear.
But “time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking, into the future.” The place of limbo starts to feel wasteful. We know that patience is needed, but life is rolling forward, and opportunities are being passed. There isn’t much support in Scripture that we need to wait for months and months to know what God wants us to do. This is why a sense of frustration begins to mount.
Is this idea You, Lord?
What I’m talking about, specifically, are the ideas and dreams we have. I’m what you call an “idea person.” I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse ha! But I get countless ideas every year. My notebooks are filled with them. I even spend time developing many of them. But which ones should I do? Which ones are God’s plans? I need to know. Because if I don’t get a clear word from the Lord, I’ll be stuck; I’ll be hesitant; I’ll have no confidence. It reminds me of the prayer of Moses:
And he said to him, "If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?" And the LORD said to Moses, "This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name." —Exodus 33:15-17
You see this kind of desperate praying throughout the Word when men and women needed to know what the Lord wanted them to do. In other words, they wanted nothing to do with anything that God wasn’t in.
God’s will
Some decisions and questions we might be seeking God’s will about are—
Should I move?
Should I change careers?
Who should I marry?
Are we to have children?
Am I called to missions?
Where am I called?
When should I go?
What church should I be at?
What ministries should I do?
How can I overcome this weakness?
You get the idea. These are big decisions, life decisions. These kinds of decisions matter. We should never decide any of these kinds of things lightly. We want to make sure we are in the perfect will of God.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. —Romans 12:2
How can we punch through?
When we are in this place of uncertainty about an important decision, and we are feeling increasingly unsettled, what can we do? Again, we’ve already “prayed about it,” right? We’ve been praying and pondering and talking to people. And we still don’t know. We’ve gone to the pastor to see what he thinks—but he doesn’t know! There are times when making a list of pros and cons is utterly useless. Each list has equal pros and cons. Both options are attractive. One isn’t emerging as clearly as the better idea. What do we do? How long should we wait?
There’s a certain kind of prayer that we see in Scripture that isn’t just the practice of “praying about it.” It’s the kind of prayer that knocks at heaven's doors until they open. It’s a little like Jacob wrestling with the angel saying, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” It’s coming to a place where we have to get through, we have to get direction from the Lord.
Many examples from the Bible could be given of this type of desperate prayer to hear God or lay ahold of God. One thing you’ll notice is that the Lord never scolds anyone for this kind of aggressive insistence to know His will. In fact, He loves it and commends it. Remember the woman with the issue of blood who pressed through the crowd to touch the hem of Christ’s garment? Remember when some people busted through the roof of the house Jesus was in to lower down their friend who needed healing? Remember when people rushed up to Jesus and interpreted Him to cry for mercy desperately? He was never mad about that. He not only welcomed it but lifted these incidents up as examples of great faith. Faith isn’t just passively believing from a distance, faith plows through until it obtains the object it’s seeking.
Hannah
Hannah prayed with this kind of desperation in her barrenness. She didn’t just accept the situation. She didn’t just pray about it casually once in a while. She was determined to barrel into the presence of God and find out what the mind of the Lord was.
She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly. —1 Samuel 1:10
As she continued praying before the LORD, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli took her to be a drunken woman. —1 Samuel 1:12-13
Hannah was pouring her soul out to the Lord with anguish, and the Lord answered her cry and gave her a son. His name was Samuel, a great and mighty prophet in his generation.
Jesus
Even Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane seemed to come up against this need to know the Father’s perfect will. It’s hard to fully understand His prayers in the Garden but we know He was asking if it was at all possible if the “cup” He was about to drink—speaking of the atonement through crucifixion—could be taken away. He says, “Nevertheless not My will but Yours be done.” He knows but in His humanness He is seeking deeper affirmation from the Father to give Him strength. An angel comes and strengthens Him, and with fierce determination, He faces the cross and bears the sin of the world.
The crossroads
There have been times in my life and ministry when I came to a crossroads, when I desperately needed to know what the Lord wanted me to do. I would regularly be praying about what to do, but I wouldn’t be getting an answer. I’d finally become more drastic and aggressive in my prayers. I’d maybe put aside food or drive to a solitary place and cry out with “loud cries and petitions” until I heard from the Lord. I’d get raw and real and tell God—“I don’t want to miss Your will, and I don’t want to waste any more time waiting. If it’s Your will for me to keep waiting then that’s fine—but let me know that it’s Your will for me to wait.”
Some of the big decisions I’ve had to make in my life were marriage, moving to NYC, leaving NYC to attend Bible school, moving to Boston to do college ministry, moving to Rhode Island, taking a ministry position at my home church, planting a church, where to plant, moving the church to the Southside, taking on a building project of $250,000, and many other things.
Wit's end
I remember at the end of the third year after starting Ren Church, it wasn’t going so well. It’s hard to plant churches in New England, harder in Providence and extremely hard on the edgy west side of Providence. I was young and inexperienced. People in the church were in conflict with each other. Some left—with their tithe! We were sinking. We only had about twenty people. My wife was working and I was making a very meager salary. We had two young children and a mortgage. I had tried every innovative idea I could come up with to draw people to the church.
I was seriously wondering if I should do something different since I certainly couldn’t support my family this way. Is this church really Your will, Lord? Maybe my time is done and someone else should take it from here? I need to know Your will. I remember the prayer session vividly when I earnestly cried to God. As I poured out my soul the vision for the church burned in me. As I prayed and wept I came to a place of willingness to do whatever I needed to do to keep going. I remember telling God I’d work at a fast food place or Walmart 50 hours a week if that’s what it would take. That I’d do anything to see this vision through! The Lord spoke to my heart—“I am with you, keep going,” and I found myself experiencing a Spirit-infused resolve to not budge from defending my “field of lentils.”
And next to him was Shammah, the son of Agee the Hararite. The Philistines gathered together at Lehi, where there was a plot of ground full of lentils, and the men fled from the Philistines. But he took his stand in the midst of the plot and defended it and struck down the Philistines, and the LORD worked a great victory. —2 Samuel 23:11-12