on May 2, 2015
About three years ago, God began the process of rocking our world. For years, I had been praying that God would bring change about in my life. Every summer, I would apply for jobs outside of the teaching field because I was just ready for a change, yet that door never opened. The summer of 2008 was no different. July 1st came around, and I was already starting to get anxious and dread school starting.
We had been working on building a desk all summer, and one, early July morning, I was out in the garage sanding it. I started praying and asking God to help me to develop a good attitude about the upcoming school year “since that is evidently where He wanted me since no doors had opened.” The next morning, I went out again to work on sanding the desk again before it got too hot. I was just sanding, not really thinking about anything other than that, when all of a sudden I heard God speak to my soul the most bizarre thing. Out of the blue, I heard “Why don’t you take a leap of faith, quit your job even though you don’t have another one lined up, and TRUST that I’ll provide?”
My first response was, “I can’t do that. It’s just crazy. We’ve got bills to pay, and we can’t afford for me to be unemployed. We have some financial goals that we can’t meet if I’m not able to make the same salary that I have now.” God didn’t argue with me. He just let the thought hang in my mind, and after the initial shock and rejection, I began to consider it. The more I considered it, the more peace I had. That night, I told Nathan that I believed that God had spoken to me earlier and asked him to pray about it for a week. I didn’t tell Nathan what it was other than it was something big that would be a leap of faith.
Around that same time, God had also really been dealing with Nathan about his call to the ministry. He had wrestled with it for a long time, and God finally brought him to the point where he could no longer deny it. A week or so before, Nathan had surrendered to the call, but he wasn’t sure exactly what the call was or what the next step should be. The uncertainty of what exactly God was calling him to was very scary. We had no idea what the future would look like anymore. We had only been married for 4 months, and the “plans” that we had made about what our first few years of marriage would look like were becoming very shaky because of what God was asking us to do.
At the end of the week of prayer, we had a day of fasting and prayer because we really thought we needed to hear from God. About 2:00 in the afternoon, we were getting very hungry, and being at home with food in the next room was too much temptation. We decided to go for a drive.
We ended up at a pull out that over looked the river between Aztec and Durango. I told Nathan what I was pretty sure I’d heard from God. His reaction at first was similar to mine. We prayed about his call to the ministry and about my job. We both read our Bibles. We didn’t get any clear direction beyond what we’d already heard, but we did get some encouragement and confirmation from scripture and from nature. Isaiah 48: 15-18 says: I, even I, have spoken; yes, I have called him. I will bring him, and he will succeed in his mission. “Come near me and listen to this: “From the first announcement I have not spoken in secret; at the time it happens, I am there.” And now the Sovereign LORD has sent me, with his Spirit. This is what the LORD says— your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the LORD your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.”
After pondering everything for a while, Nathan said he thought that I should quit my teaching job. It was a scary thought, and as we sat and tried to wrap our minds around the consequences, a lone sheep came out of the woods on the other side of the river.
That sheep stayed on the bank of the river and stared straight at us for a long time while nodding his head up and down, as if saying “yup, you got it—you heard right.” He just kept looking and nodding. Then, he got a little braver. He took a little step forward toward the river. One hoof was on those loose river rocks, and the rest still on the soil. He kept his eyes on us and nodded again. Then, he took another little tentative step, and both front hooves were on the rocks. His eyes were still on us, and that head was still nodding. Then, another step, another hoof on the rocks, and another nod for us. Pretty soon, that brave little sheep, was completely out on the rocks and had made his way all the way out to where the water started. His front hooves were actually in the water. He looked at us and nodded for a little while longer before he took a drink and left.
The next day, when we told our Sunday School class about this, our teacher and other classmates were stunned by the story. They told us that sheep are scared of water, and they normally won’t go in it. What we had seen was not the normal behavior of a sheep.
As we processed all of this, we realized with amazement that God showed us through that brave (or crazy) sheep, what our journey would look like with him. He had called Nathan but had not given the full picture of what that call would look like because He wanted us to be like that little sheep, taking one step at a time. He wanted us to keep moving toward him, saying “Yes, Lord” even when the road below might be rocky, the journey scary and the destination unknown.
The image of that sheep has hung with us since then as we have taken many of those cautious, and sometimes not so cautious steps while pursuing God’s call on Nathan’s life. We still don’t know what it will all eventually look like or the path to get there, but it’s not nearly as scary as it used to be. We’ve learned in the past few years that God is the one who directs our steps (when we listen), and He knows where we need to be and what we need to be doing. We just need to be willing to be like the sheep—just keep walking, just keep walking! I am thankful that God chose to use nature to confirm his call and to give us such a memory to cling to.