17. Shaken and Stilled

An excerpt from a longer essay on The Discipleship of Discernment, a story of my journey through discernment, fasting, and prayer in 2019.

Post number 16 can be read here: https://seesomethingmore.blogspot.com/2019/11/discernment-diner.html

After months of contemplating decisions about my future and seeking God’s direction, particularly about what I should do next in life, where I should go, and what missions agency I should choose, I felt like a jar of oil, water, sand, and pebbles all shaken up. I had gathered an enormous amount of information about the state of the world, different missions organizations, and available opportunities. I was well-verses in the pros and cons of every scenarios. I was essentially functioning on information overload, and everything that I had been learning throughout my year of fasting and praying felt like a huge collision of particles that was about to explode. 

The Lord spoke to me on our regular Tuesday time together. He gave me this picture of a jar and invited me to set the jar down and let all those particles start to settle. Then look for what was sitting at the bottom. What are the big rocks? What weighs the heaviest in my heart? What do I keep coming back to? What excites me? 

It is only in stillness that we find clarity. 

If there were any rocks of or guilt that were weighing me down or driving the decision, I asked the Lord to remove them. Then I waited to see what sunk to the bottom in the stillness. 

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The Lord gives Sabbath to his people for great purpose. When we stop working and start resting, when we stop collecting more and start remembering what has already been given, when we slow our momentum and start living in the moment, when we sacrifice performance for presence and trade achievement for awareness and surrender movement for meditation, God has room to enter in and speak.

So I practiced Sabbath, not in a literal ceasing of all work on Sundays, but in a specific and spiritual sense as it related to my discernment process. I stopped collecting information and took a break from trying to make the decision. I rested. And information that I had collected started to settle down and take shape. 

The rocks that I found settling to the bottom were these: 

• A heart and passion for Muslim unreached people groups
• A team focused on a New Testament model of discipleship and evangelism 
• Using nursing as an entry into a creative access country
• Using the French language as an already acquired tool for ministry 
• A growing desire for North Africa or the Mediterranean Rim

The Lord revealed that each of these things was like a puzzle piece in my hand. I saw that each one was heavy enough to sink to the bottom when everything got shaken up. I learned that these were the things God had given me to help me make my decision. So I asked, Where do they all fit?