Taken verbatim from Heny Clouds 2024 book “Why I Believe” Part II How I came to Believe in Miracles: Do Not Sign It, pages 117-122, 1589 words, plan accordingly.
Many of you readers will identify with the segment below because regardless of your chosen career field and years of service, even the challenging relationships and leadership skills you’ve accessed, (or even now are!) we too have witnessed these entrepreneurial or managerial moments when we were divinely “carried, lifted, guided, empowered” expanding our efforts exponentially… merlin
Dr. Cloud:
It was at a point in my publishing career where things had taken off, and it was “free agent” time. Like in sports, when you are not tied down to a team anymore, you are free to sign with anyone. In publishing, after finishing a contract, it can be a fun and exciting time as well. All the publishers are coming around and wanting to do the next book or books, and it is a fun time to get together with them and think about next projects.
All of the season of meetings were over, and we had finally reached an agreement, and a good one for several reasons. It was for several books and would give me a clear path for about five years. I liked having the direction set so I could just get to work on writing. We had finalized the negotiation and would be signing in a few days.
I was at home after dinner talking with Tori, and my phone rang. It was a woman with whom I served on a board with and only saw a couple of times a year. I knew her, but not that well, and she certainly was not current on anything I was up to or working on. She knew nothing about my work with publishers.
“Hey, Shelly. How are you?” I asked.
“I’m good,” she said. “But I had a vision about you.”
“What?” I asked. “Really? Tell me.” This was not a normal occurrence for me. I was pretty new to the world of people having visions at that time.
“Well, it was very clear. I saw you in a yard, and you were talking to people in the yard, and there was a fence around all of you. Like a fenced in yard. And then the Lord said this: ‘You have been speaking to people in the yard, and he wants to remove the fence so you can speak to people outside the yard.’ And he says that you are about to sign some contract … I think it is about a book project or something … and he says if you sign it, it will keep you in that yard. So don’t sign it.”
Oh my … I was so certain things were going so well and my immediate future had so much clarity. And now this …
“So, Shelly … Are you sure? … This is from Him?” I always tend to ask that when I get people who have “messages from God.” There are a lot of kooks out there, and I rarely believe them. But this one … this had too much credibility in both the message and the messenger. It was so specific … and I knew exactly what it meant, too.
The deal was with a Christian publisher. And no matter what the title or subject of a book, if the publisher is Christian, retailers often will tend to bury it in the religious section of the bookstores (which actually existed at the time, before Amazon and online book buying). And the marketing would be mostly to the Christian world … and what that meant was clear in the vision: the people in the yard. God was telling me that He wanted me to talk to people outside the Christian world, outside the yard, and He was going to move the fence. How in the world would she ever know that I was (a) about to sign a book deal, and (b) one that would keep me talking to a certain closed group?
Another reason I also knew that this was real was that for about 18 months, when I would out on my patio to pray, I would hear a voice in my head say, I am taking you out the ministry. That is all it said, and it was clear. But I did not know what all that meant, other than for me, it did mean something very specific.” I was supposed to begin working outside the “Christian” world of audiences that I was speaking and writing too. To me, at that point, “ministry “meant Christian audiences, which back then, was most of what I did. And what I would discover soon was the message from that voice also meant much more about my publishing, leadership consulting work, business speaking, and media.
“Yes, I am sure,” she said. “It was from God. It was clear.”
I hung up bummed. Everything had looked so good, and now I knew I had to walk away from so much that was secure. But, as I learned way back in leaving Dallas, when God says “Go,” you do it, and you leave security behind. He will provide the next place to land. So, I walked away from the deal.
I won’t bore you with the details, but the publisher was dumbfounded and could not believe we were not going through with it. It made no sense … unless you were on that phone call. And then, it was confirmed.
Soon thereafter, Time Life called with an offer to do a book with a national secular media campaign they were doing with a music offering that would take the message way, way past the Christian audience I had been speaking to up to that point. So, John Townsend and I wrote a book for them called God Will Make a Way, and the beginning of talking to people outside the yard had begun. Now that “fence” was beginning to be removed.
But there was much more to come. And this was the real fulfillment of the next stage of the vision. Now that I was free to publish “outside-the-yard,” God (through some other God-directed clear steps, some “random” circumstances), put me with an outside-the-yard publishing agent who wanted to do my first secular business book and take it to a New York publisher, which would full-blown be outside the yard. And I would be writing to businesses without the Christian language in the book, which would mean that they could now use the principles in their public companies and secular businesses. I had always worked in the secular business world, doing leadership consulting, but all my books up to that point had Christian content in them, and most companies didn’t want to offend people with that and would not use my books. This step was fulfilling the voice I heard on my patio about God taking me outside the Christian world, as well as the vision about talking to people “outside the yard.” It was all coming true, exactly like both the voice and the vision had said.
We went to New York, signed a deal, and published a leadership book that showed the principles that I had been using with leaders that I had been using for a long time but had no Bible verses in it to scare people off. Cleanly outside the yard. (It is weird … if you say “It is good to be honest” in a book, people love it and think you’re smart. But if you say “The Bible says it good to be honest,” you get cancelled, and they think you are “one of those” religious kooks. So, I didn’t use any Bible verses in the book at all; I just shared the business leadership principles that I use in the companies I work with. And at various times, they would lead to some great conversations about why I believe.
Well, things happened, as the vision had said. The New York Times reviewed the book (it was called Integrity) and called it “the best book
of the bunch” in the leadership books they were reviewing. That turned it into the launch of a new direction for my writing and a new audience … the secular business world. Although I have done CEO coaching and leadership consulting for twenty years at that point with many secular and public companies and had built and run my businesses, my brand in publishing had always been pigeonholed in the Christian yard. God took me out of that for His reasons and supernaturally directed me to do it through the vision and the “voice” I heard. Had he not, I would still be “in the yard,” and I would have missed so many great opportunities to meet and work with so many people who don’t hang out in that yard, for purposes that were His.
He does guide us … even when we think we know what we want and need to do. He closes some doors that we desperately desire, for other reasons we might not understand. Just like I thought I wanted to follow my golf dreams or continue down my publishing track as it has been unfolding, God wanted something different and better. Again, the proverb rang true:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs3:5-6)