Day 45 – Trusting inner guidance
In the spring of 1973 during my one-year training in Ohio, there was an exercise that our whole group was supposed to participate in. The objective was for a group of us to go to an area of the country, talk to people in that city for 3 weeks and then run an introductory Bible class for them for another 3 weeks, then return to Ohio.
I was assigned to Moorehead, Minnesota with a group of people and we were going to leave in about two weeks. I had no objections. I didn’t really know Minnesota, because I had never been there and interestingly enough a few years later I would be assigned to run that state, but that’s another story for another time.
The problem was there was something else pulling on my heart.
Now I need to give you a back story so you can understand the whole picture. In 1968 this ministry, I was a part of, exploded with young people as part of the overall Jesus movement that I have talked about before. The main areas of growth were California, Kansas, New York and, of course, our little town of Greenville on the East Carolina University campus.
As it sadly happens so many times, when there is big growth egos and money gets involved and, in the spring of 1972, just as I was getting ready to graduate and become a part of this ministry, the leadership in California and New York decided to pull away and become their own work separate from the headquarters in Ohio. That would have been fine, if just the leadership had gone away to start something new, but they wanted to take all the people with them as well. Some people didn’t even know it was happening, but it did.
This was devasting to me. This ministry I was going to give my life to was falling apart. I sat on the campus at ECU one morning thinking about it, praying about it and talking to God about it and the insight that came to me, and I don’t remember exactly how, but the bottom line was… “I was not in the ministry, the ministry was in ME, therefore no one can take it away and I can’t lose it”. That set my heart at ease, and I was okay. The fallout still happened, and it was devasting.
A month or so earlier, at the Easter event we held at ECU, three musicians from New York who played and sang together came to performed for us. They called themselves “Pressed Down, Shaken Together and Running Over”, which was a verse from the Bible about God’s blessing, but we usually just called them “Pressed Down”.
Two acoustic guitars and three voices that harmonized like angles. They were as good as any group that played at Woodstock a few years earlier and everything they sang was about God and the bible…I can’t even describe how good they were at playing, singing and song writing, simply amazing! I loved these guys and what they were doing. But what does this have to do with the story? Being from New York, they were part of the fallout from the leadership pulling away from the bigger ministry.
Back to the spring of 1973 and me being assigned to Minnesota. My heart pulled to go to Long Island, NY and try to help put things back together. When I say “pulled” it was so strong and so vivid that I actually walked into office of the man who was running everything at the time and said that even though I didn’t mind going to Minnesota, I really believed that God wanted me to go to New York and help the people there.
Who the hell was I to walk in and say basically, “You made a mistake, I’m supposed to go to New York”. Well, he just looked at me and said, “Why don’t you let me run the ministry”. To which I replied, “Yes, sir” and left.
“You idiot! What were you thinking???” was what I told myself for the rest of the morning.
At lunch, two of my friends, who had been sitting in the office when I came in came over to talk to me. They said, “I can’t believe you came in and did that this morning!”.
“I know”, I replied. “How stupid was that?”
“No!” they said, “You don’t understand. Not 30 minutes before you came in the new ministry leader, in New York, had called asking for a group to be sent to New York to help heal things!”
Talk about a shock!!! Well, long story short, two week later, I was with about 10 or 12 others on our way to New York to heal what had been broken. To top it all, four months later my first assignment on the field was…Long Island, NY and I’ll tell you more about that later.
You should always check out your inner guidance and not get talked out of it just because it looks or sounds crazy. Don’t be afraid to at least explore what is pulling on your heart and see where it goes. It may not pan out, but at least you were willing to put yourself on the line and see. The next time, it could be a VERY important matter and your answer to God’s call could change everything.
Recent Comments