Right in the Bullseye
The other day I was drinking milk grass (what Californians refer to as a Matcha Latte) at Blue Bottle in beautiful Malibu, CA. I was with a friend of mine, Kelly, who happens to be a few years ahead of me in life.
Kelly was sharing with me about a crazy season where she and her husband uprooted their lives in Florida and found themselves replanting on the West Coast.
It was really wild, and goes a little something like this: They had a whole life in Florida - a home where they raised their kids, a church they helped plant, and a thriving local business they built. They even had goats for goodness’ sake. But one day, they heard the Lord tell them it was time to go…
and so they left.
Okay, so it wasn’t that simple. But it was truly that faithful.
In their separate times of prayer, each of them felt the Holy Spirit press upon them that they should put their house up for sale. They put it up. It didn’t sell. They stayed. A few years - yes, I said, YEARS - later, they got a call:
“Hey, we saw you put your house up on the market a few years ago, but we couldn’t afford it at the time. We can afford it now, and we’d like to buy it.”
They sold it. They asked, “Okay, God, what now?” Her husband gets a call. He gets offered a job on the West Coast. They move. They start over: a new home, a new church plant, a new business, and no more goats.
Isn’t God wild? I love this story. I love it so much for a lot of reasons. One, Kelly and her husband had incredible faith to listen to God the first time God asked them to put their house on the market. When it didn’t sell, my first reaction certainly would’ve been to crumble: “Okay, well I guess I just don’t really hear God. Must’ve got it wrong. Must’ve been in my head.” But the reality was, God needed them to act in faith now for future fulfillment. And they trusted that God had a plan.
(she is known to pause in the middle of our talks and say, quietly, “What are you doing, God?” with a smile on her face)
The second thing that moves me about this story is their willingness to actually move. I am a homebody. If God asked me to move, I’d probably say, “Where? Next door? Because even that is, honestly, a little far.”
So, I asked her how they did this, and her answer has really stuck with me.
“I’ve learned over the years,” Kelly replied, “that the best place to be is right in the bullseye of where God is calling.”
Then she added, “Plus, I’ve come to know that no place on earth is truly my home. My home is in heaven. So we do as the Lord asks.”
Um, can you say faith?
In the Bible, in the book of Jonah, we see an example of the Lord asking one of his people to GO. The Lord chooses Jonah and says to him, “Go to Nineveh,” and Jonah says, “Tbh, I’d rather not.”
Jonah 1:1-3 ESV “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.”
In this passage, we see Jonah resisting the Lord’s call. Later, as many of us know, we see how his plan for resistance is ultimately thwarted, and he ends up going to Nineveh after all, just as the Lord asked him to do.
But I can honestly relate to Jonah, and I wonder if you can too. Sometimes when God asks us to do something that sounds like it’s going to be hard we say, “I hear you. I see you. No thank you.”
Yet as we learn from Jonah’s story, truly the best place to be is indeed in the center of God’s will, and trying to evade it can lead to many unnecessary struggles. We exist to worship God. To serve him. So our hearts are never more at peace then when we are doing as he asks. Being right in the bullseye holds great blessing and peace of mind.
“blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.” - Jeremiah 17:7-8
selah, pause and reflect
What is an area of uncertainty in your life? Is God asking you to stay, or to leave?
How can you take a small step to be faithful?
It is true that we know only in part (1 Cor 13:9). But it is also true that we know something. If you know God, you can hear His voice.
On a More Personal Note:
A couple months ago, Marcus and I found ourselves in an uncertain work position. We decided to take some time separately to pray and come back together to share what we felt the Lord was trying to tell us.
I don’t know about you but when I’m emotional about something, I have trouble discerning what the Holy Spirit is sharing with me versus what are merely my own feelings, so sometimes getting a word from another believer really helps.
When we came back together, Marcus said, “All I really heard was: ‘Wait’”. I flipped around my notebook with one word written on it: “Wait”.
God speaks to us, and loves us.
