Hello, Goodbye: How Do You Know?

Friends wonder as they consider the end of our happy seventeen tenure at Friendship Church how I know that our move to Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio is the right thing. How, in other words, can we be sure that this move agrees with the will of God?

Short answer: At one level, I don't know if it agrees with the will of God. That's where faith, trust in God, comes in.

One strong sign that God's hand is in a thing is when it entails leaving the comfortable to enter the unknown. God often wants us to leave comfortable pursuits and surroundings so that we learn to depend on Him. When we stay in our comfortable places, we can fool ourselves into thinking that we actually know what we're doing. Moving into the unknown is one way we can follow the wisdom found in Proverbs 3:5, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight." (I love that!)

Of course, Saint Matthew is a solid congregation that's been around since 1852. The people of the parish are friendly, warm, and committed to Jesus. Logan is a beautiful town set in the gorgeous Hocking Hills section of Ohio, surely among the most attractive places in the world. So, it's not as though God is telling us to go into the wilderness to a land He will show us.

But I could have stayed at Friendship for another seventeen years, retiring at age 66, when my pension will be fully vested. I could have continued to live with comfort and ease which I might have deluded myself into believing was of my making. I could be like the rich fool in Jesus' parable who told himself, "Relax, eat, drink, be merry." (Of course, like that rich fool, I would have been further deluding myself into thinking that I was guaranteed tomorrow. There's nothing to say that I'll even make it to age 66. Or age 54, for that matter.)

Christ does comfort us with the knowledge that through faith in Him, our sins are forgiven and we belong to God eternally. But Christ hasn't called us to lives of comfort and ease. Our job is to follow Christ, wherever He leads: "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people,” Jesus told His first disciples (Matthew 4:19). He tells us the same thing. He also says things like:

• "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:37-39).
• “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 16:24-25)

None of this is to say that life in Logan is a grim prospect to us. NOT AT ALL. If things go as they usually do, we expect to make great friends there. We expect to love and enjoy Saint Matthew. We anticipate finding great restaurants, good hiking trails, and favorite places to shop.

But we are also being taken out of what has become a comfort zone these past seventeen years, the very sort of thing you'd expect God to do in the lives of His people.

When God takes me out of my comfort zones, my first response is almost always the same: I draw closer to God. Christians, even pastors, do that with the assurance that James gives in the New Testament. "Draw near to God," we're told, "and he will draw near to you" (James 4:8).

It's funny, as I've prepared for going to Saint Mattthew, though filled with excitement and anticipation, I'm also filled with a sense of how little I really know, not just about tomorrow, but even about today. I've been drawn nearer to God and have been reading His Word and praying more and with greater dependence than I would have had we decided to stay here in our comfort zone.

So, at one level, I don't really know that God wants us to go to Saint Matthew. But at another, I'm sure that our move to Saint Matthew in Logan agrees with the will of God. More on that tomorrow.