Again, if you missed Mon & Tues, read those posts first, before this conclusion.
“Wendell, if you’re going to Hong Kong, go now!” said the gentle voice loud and as clear as it was right next to me.
My eyes flew open, and I jumped up.
A wave of adrenaline rushed through my body as I quickly realized that nobody was there. I ran out of the barn.
“Hey, Wes, where are you? What do you want?” I quickly ran all the way around the barn, calling out, “Who’s there? Where are you?
After several minutes of searching both inside and outside of the barn, I knew the answer, though I had known it all along. No human had been there. God had clearly given me the next step that I had been praying and fasting for. The direction was so loud and clear that there was no way I could disavow it. Only God could have known what I was praying and fasting for. Not even Daisy knew.
I collapsed to the floor where I had been sitting just a few minutes earlier, trembling, and terrified as the realization of what had just happened settled into my mind. “If you’re going to Hong Kong, go now,” I had been clearly directed. “If you are going …” made it my choice. “To Hong Kong …” was the destination. “Go now …” gave me the time frame. Everything I’ve been asking God for had come in that simple life changing sentence.
God, in a moment, had set before me a new path for my life, a path I’d assumed He had been preparing for a long, long time. Now, the choice was mine to make: stay the course I had been on for the past few years or risk an adventure with Jesus on a narrow, uncharted path that seemed fraught with all kinds of imagined and un-imagined peril.
As I leaned back against that barn pole, my pounding heart immediately responded to God’s challenge with a huge enthusiastic yes! But, just as emphatically, though, my mind screamed out “No, no, no, no! Don’t do this! Think it through first. Be reasonable. Consider your career. Look at this beautiful car you just you still need to finish waxing. Think about all the bills that need paying. Think about the baby that is due in 6 months. It was the same old arguments that had kept me awake night after night after night. It was that bothersome old giant of compromise trying to make a last-ditch, desperate grab to hold on to his territory.
It was time! This battle was on for real! The giant was going to go down, now or never! I put the lid back on that can of wax and threw it into the trunk of the car. I’ll find out for sure if I’m ready to go really to go in this new direction. I’ll see what Daisy says when I tell her how God is guiding us! With that, I left the barn and the half-finished wax job and walked back to our new unfinished house that I had been investing so much time, energy, and money in. I found Daisy standing at the stove stirring a pot of vegetable soup as I stepped into the kitchen.
“OK, God,” I prayed silently, “if Daisy agrees with this insanity, then, for sure, this must be You directing our lives.”
“Daisy,” I said softly, my insides feeling like Jelly, “I’ve just received some very clear direction from God.”
Daisy stopped stirring the soup, and without turning away from her project, replied, “Oh and what did you hear?”
“What I heard was. ‘If we’re going to go to Hong Kong, we are to go now,”’ I said without any expression of emotion or further explanation.
“And how soon do we actually leave?” Daisy asked as she slowly turned to face me.
I hadn’t prepared to answer that question yet. However, without giving a second thought and knowing I had to give one month advance notification at the college if I would leave my teaching position, I replied, “We leave in one month. I’ll turn in my resignation tomorrow!”
“Wendell, are you sure this is of God?” Daisy asked.
I told her what had transpired over the past months and in the barn a few minutes earlier.
“OK,” she simply said in affirmation and, with that, turned back to give her full attention to the vegetable soup.
I stared at the small bulge beginning to show on her stomach and had to wonder again at my sanity. “OK, God we’re in this for real! I’m really, really scared, but I don’t want to miss what You have for us. Please help us to see through this to the end-whenever, wherever, however that is!”
NEXT UP: We’ll see!