Hearing From God

I’m quitting my job.

Not today.  Possibly not until a year from now.  But Jeff and I decided this week that I should quit working.  After months of feeling torn between work and home, weighing the pros and cons of each, and trying to discern where I was called to spend my time, it was decided on bike ride with a word from God.

Just like that.

I had been reading The Boy Who Loved Windows and wondering if it was time for me to quit.  (Read more about that here.)  As we were driving to our friends’ house for dinner, I started to tell him about the book and what I was thinking.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about this too,” he said.

“You have?”

“Yeah.  And as I was riding my bike last week, I asked God why we were doing all of this extra work with him.  Why should we spend all of this money and time on Zach?  His answer was that we needed to do it because we were playing for keeps.”

Okay, time for a small break in the story.  You might be thinking, “What? He was praying on his bike and he heard from God? That’s crazy.”  And you’d be right, of course.  But you already know that we believe a crazy story, and hearing from God is just one of the crazy parts of the story.

What surprised me was not that God answered someone’s prayer.  What surprised me was that he answered Jeff in such a direct manner.  Jeff has a hard time sitting still for prayer, so he does most of his praying on his bike.  But he rarely “hears” from God, at least not the way most people at our Pentecostal church think of hearing from God.  Jeff is a true blue Evangelical, and if you tell him you’re frustrated because you can’t seem to hear from God, he’ll probably say something like, “You want to hear from God?  Open your Bible.  Everything you need to hear is there.” (well, he probably wouldn’t say that out loud, but he’d think something pretty close to that.)

It’s amazing – and beautiful – how much he loves and knows and relies on that book. Jeff thinks in Bible stories.  I was in a writing group with him where he wrote short narratives about our boys.  He started every piece with a verse from the Bible.  That’s when I really understood that he sees his whole life through the lens of that book.  Not just it’s overarching narrative, but each book, chapter, and verse.

But everyone once in awhile, God breaks through Jeff’s insistence that God has already said plenty about everything we need to know.  But I can only remember it happening three times since we’ve been married.  So when Jeff said that God told him something, and it didn’t come with a verse number attached, I perked up. (That doesn’t sound quite right.  I listen when there is a verse attached too.  It’s just that I knew this missive would have a specific, clear application.)

God told Jeff that we were playing for keeps with Zach.

Well, that’s all fine and good, but what in the world does that mean?  Check in on Monday for part two…