Once again, the reading from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost For His Highest was an eye-opener.
I found a 30-day reading plan in the You Version Bible app that pulls various readings from Chambers’ devotional, and today’s reading talked about the passage from Luke where the blind man yells out to Jesus to get his attention, ignoring those who try to quiet him. Jesus stops and asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” His reply was simply, “Lord, I want to see.”
Chambers writes: “Is there something in your life that not only disturbs you, but makes you a disturbance to others? If so, it is always something you cannot handle yourself. “Then those who went before warned him that he should be quiet; but he cried out all the more…” (Luke 18:39). Be persistent with your disturbance until you get face to face with the Lord Himself. Don’t deify common sense. To sit calmly by, instead of creating a disturbance, serves only to deify our common sense. When Jesus asks what we want Him to do for us about the incredible problem that is confronting us, remember that He doesn’t work in commonsense ways, but only in supernatural ways.“
Too often I look at the situation I’m in, assess my abilities or our bank account balance, then decide if it’s possible. There are times I don’t do that too — like when we took the position at BFA — and suffer through the strange looks from others who don’t quite get why people would leave relatively successful careers to go off to a foreign country for two years…
Many times God pushes us into things that just don’t make sense to the world, but then again, God doesn’t always make sense to to the world. He doesn’t promise that we’ll be comfortable and respected, just that he’ll take care of us through whatever comes our way. Common sense doesn’t explain how he does what he does, nor does it help when explaining to others why we do what we do when being obedient to his call. He doesn’t promise to give us answers to others’ questions about what we do either, but a truthful answer to those questions is what he expects of us, of me, and that can be a seed of faith planted in someone, or water to a seed planted before.
Right now I find myself “in between jobs”. It’s not a great place to be. I love the flexibility of being able to work on stuff at home and doing things on my own schedule and not having to work around the 8 to 5 thing, but I get pressure from others who expect me to be doing something about it. I’m even getting that from my wife; common sense tells her that I ought to be looking for another job in IT, but after being dismissed from the help desk job at Marco, I’m just not feeling like that’s something I want to jump back into right now. Yes, common sense tells me that I have greater earning potential doing something that I’ve done for a long time, but common sense also makes potential employers shy away from a guy who’s pushing 60 and content with an entry-level job in IT; the career track just doesn’t make sense. Common sense also says that it’s safest to be employed by someone else, but what about trusting God to carve out a new career being self-employed?
I’m not sure what to do at this point because nothing really makes sense… Show me what you would have me to do, Lord.