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An excerpt from a longer essay on “The Discipleship of Discernment”: insights from a year of prayer and fasting about decision-making, God’s will, and living in obedience to the mission of Jesus Christ. “Do you think I’m making too big a deal out of this?” I asked God on one of my prayer walks. I don’t know if you can tell when God nods, but I knew my spirit within me was nodding. This was only my six hundredth time to pray about this subject this year.  By the spring of 2019, I had three open doors in front of me. Knowing that I was headed to an unreached people group (UPG), I knew of three opportunities that would put me on the ground with teams doing work with UPGs - in Marseille, Athens, and East Africa. I had touched base with each of the teams, and they were all open to my coming for a vision trip to explore and learn for a few weeks. Now I just had to choose which one and when to do it.  Do I tend to make a big deal out of decisions? Yes, definitely.  D...

As I continued to pray for God’s guidance, I still desired some revelation or clarity from him about where he was calling me to serve him next. Even as I was learning all these things about direction and destination and the who and how, it didn’t change the fact that I still wanted to hear from him about my future, and a geographical location would be nice. I had experienced God lead me like that before - directing me to a university and to Burkina Faso - and I believed he would do it again. So I patiently waited and persistently asked for something like that again.  It was still while I was thinking about a geographical location when I realized he was calling me to a spiritual one.  What if the place God wants to lead us is a spiritual one? Are we too preoccupied with finding a physical address when God is taking us to a spiritual place?  For me, this looked like two different things. First, the spiritual location he was taking me was into a deeper walk with Ch...

Looking back on this past year, one of the biblical passages that I have most treasured on the journey of discernment has been Hebrews 11 - a familiar passage. But since the Word of God is living and active, this chapter took on new meaning when I studied it through the lense of a season of uncertainty. The way I fell upon the passage, or the way it fell upon me, was rather unplanned and unexpected.  I was asked to share at one of my supporting congregations about my missions experience. They were going through a series on faith, using Hebrews 11 as the guiding passage. I was given the section on Abraham, and they told me that I reminded them of Abraham, who obeyed when he didn’t know where he was going.  I told them that if they wanted to hear from someone who doesn’t know where they’re going, I’m your gal.  This plunged me into a study of Hebrews 11. I mediated on it, memorized it, and discovered such rich truth in it for my discernment process that I didn’t e...

I kept asking the Lord for direction, and people repeatedly prayed for God’s direction in my life. God does promise to lead, guide, and direct, but I had associated direction with specific detailed instructions, and I began to learn that getting direction from God is less like a map and more like a GPS.  With a map, you see your starting and ending point and multiple ways to calculate the route. With a GPS, you plug in a destination and then trust the GPS to get you there. The GPS does the calculating and then gives you step by step instructions just as you are ready to receive them. Turn right here. Now, keep left.  First things first. You can’t steer a parked car. And the rudder only navigates when the boat is moving. In the same way, our first step in being directed by God is to get moving.  But you also have to plug in a destination.  Our Christian call is not to a place, but to a person - the person of Jesus Christ. “Follow me,” he says. You des...

My prayers during this past year have been saturated with requests for direction and clarity. I contemplated until I became practically consumed with the choices and decisions ahead. Anytime anyone asked me for a prayer request, it was about that. Prayer letter updates included that. My own private and public prayer life revolved around that.  Where should I go?  When will I go?  What will I do?  On one particular day of fasting and prayer, the Lord revealed how preoccupied I had become with the where, when, and what . I had completely neglected the who and how .  In a moment of stillness before him, he taught me that the direction he wanted to give me dealt less with the where , when , and what , and more with the who and the how . The “who” is the Lord Jesus Christ and the “how” is how to serve and obey him wherever I end up and in whatever I end up doing.  I began to learn that following Christ and doing missions is less about g...

“It is good to wait on the Lord,” says Lamentations 3:26. This became my daily pep talk and my conclusion of the matter whenever anyone asked me what I was doing next. It is likely if you knew me or hung out with me in 2019, you heard me say this. “It is good to wait on the Lord.” I repeated it to myself and others regularly, since the more I talked about my place of uncertainty, the more I learned that most everybody found themselves in that same place. So much shaping happens in the waiting, in the wilderness. I think about David in the years between the anointing and the appointing, on the run in the wilderness. I think about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness forty years, Moses in the desert before his burning bush experience, and Jesus in the wilderness of temptation. I think about how the prophets and poets write about the wilderness as a place where God draws his people out to romance them and draw them closer to himself.  None of that wandering was wasted. ...

An excerpt from a longer essay on “The Discipleship of Discernment”, insights from a year of prayer and fasting about decision-making, God’s will, and living in obedience to the mission of Jesus Christ. I've been here before. When I first learned that I wouldn’t be returning to Burkina in 2018, I panicked because I didn’t know what was next. Then God provided Togo. The same thing happened at the end of 2018 when I learned we wouldn’t be going back to Burkina again. I panicked at the unknown. God provided. The whole of 2019 found me in the same place: frightened at the unknown.  How much comfort and security we place in making plans and having certainty! In the west, we idolize clarity and are addicted to what’s next. A strong cultural pressure exists to have a ten year plan. For my whole life, I had known what was next: from primary school to secondary school to university to my first job to moving to Burkina Faso. Now I was looking into a foggy future, and the “what’s ne...

This is the first excerpt of a longer essay that I am writing regarding the spiritual journey of fasting and prayer that God has used to disciple me through a process of discernment over the course of this last year.   Introduction And Joshua said to them, « Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder...that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, « What do these stones mean to you? » then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever. »  Joshua 4:5-7 In the same way that the Israelites brought stones out of the Jordan river and laid them out as a testimony for themselves and future generations, so I look back on the stepping stones of this past year and la...