Blind Obedience

Sometimes you hear the voice of God telling you to do something and it doesn’t make sense. Can you identify? Has that ever happened to you?

It has happened to me many times.

How about in the Bible? Do you see that happening in scripture?

How about the story of Gideon?

When Gideon was preparing to go against the Midianites in battle with 32,000 men, God said, “Gideon, you have too many men.” The Midianite army was at least 130,000 and likely more.

So God instructed him to tell those who were afraid to go home. Twenty-two thousand men went home. That left an army of 10,000 men and God said, “You still have too many men.”

So God instructed Gideon to test his men, how they drank water from the stream. Gideon was to keep those men who scooped up water from the stream and put it to their mouth. The test yielded 300 men.

“Are you kidding me, God? Did I hear right?”

But Gideon went into battle with 300 men . . . and won!

Well, sometimes God’s voice doesn’t make any sense, not by human standards, anyway.

Shortly after I gave my life to Christ as a senior in high school, I became aware that I was to reach other young people, just like me, with the Gospel.

So, I went to Bible college and when I graduated, I went into business. On one occasion I was speaking in a church in Chicago and I related this story about how I graduated from Bible college and then went into business. There was a big laugh from the crowd as they understood what an illogical move this appeared to be.

I stayed in my chosen field of advertising for about 25 years. During that time, I thought I had taken the wrong fork in the road, that I had missed the will of God.

When I was 38, God spoke to me very clearly, “In seven years I am going to call you out of business and into ministry. As the time neared, I didn’t know what the ministry would be, except that I knew I was supposed to write and I knew that it would be a ministry to youth.

As I neared the age of 45, the Lord again spoke, “It’s time to start writing.”

Soon after that I went to a lunch meeting with the head of a youth ministry, and he mentioned that there was a need for discussion starter videos for students starting Bible clubs in the schools. His words resonated with me. I knew this was my first project, so I wrote and produced the first video entitled, The Future. It ended up going into 20 states, Canada, and a copy even went to Israel.

So I thought this was my ministry, to produce discussion starter videos for Bible clubs in the Schools. Ah, but still I didn’t know what was ahead and God surprised me “big time.”

The videos were difficult to market. There were a lot of phone calls to youth pastors, a lot of busy work mailing them out, sending invoices, and so on. Some of the churches were very slow to pay and in several months we still hadn’t gotten paid. It was clear there wasn’t much profit to be made in this operation. The redeeming factor was that they were a valuable tool in the hands of youth leaders.

But the operation dwindled. In the meantime, I was asked to speak in various churches and youth conferences. There were great results in the altar calls I made for prayer and a deeper commitment in serving Jesus, but the income to operate the ministry was a great challenge, as it still is today.

I had reached a sort of end of the road place in ministry, and I was praying seriously whether I should quit. I was, by necessity, still working full time for a multimedia company in downtown Minneapolis while I tried to effectively run the ministry. I was burning the candle at both ends and it was stretching me to my limit, both physically and emotionally.

In frustration, I said to a friend, “My life doesn’t make any sense. I am called to the ministry, but I am working full time in advertising.”

When the shooting in Columbine High School happened in Littleton Colorado, we had a direct route to one of the students who was in the library where several young people were shot. The question arose whether we should produce an outreach event featuring Columbine students.

We discussed the possibility and decided to go for it. It appeared to be an opportunity of a lifetime. We rented the three basketball court gymnasium in Rush City, about an hour north of Minneapolis on the I-35 freeway. As I got into the inner parts of putting a large event together, my life suddenly made perfect sense. All of the things I had learned in advertising were now being put to use; what I had learned worked perfectly to produce this event.

My experience enabled me to produce the event with excellence, which is essential if you are going to draw youth. Youth will not be attracted to an event if the advertising is shoddy or second class. That is because they spend many hours a day in front of a screen that brings them the best advertising production quality in the world, so they are conditioned for excellence and if what they see is not excellent, then they conclude it must not be cool. Youth will not embrace something that isn’t cool.

I had thought I was out of the will of God, that I had missed it, while I spent those 25 years in advertising, but in reality, it was God’s plan. He was perfectly preparing me for something I had no idea I would ever be doing.

Joseph had the same experience in Egypt. He was thrown into jail because he was falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife and he stayed there for 13 years. Jail is where God prepared him to ultimately become the second in command to Pharaoh in the land of Egypt. In jail, Joseph learned obedience, diligence, and persistence. In short, he developed the character of a leader and, when it was time, God promoted him.

When life doesn’t go as you planned it, when it looks like you have taken a wrong turn and wasted precious years, keep going, do the best with the circumstances you are dealt, and most importantly, never stop dreaming. God has promised to bring something wonderful out of your life . . . so keep going and God will deliver. God will be true to His promise to you.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)