Somebody Knows More Than God-Or Did They?

I talked with a Ministry friend of mine yesterday who shared an interesting story with me about one of my former members in Union where I pastored for 13 years. She was tending to his sick mother and found out he was a Church of God pastor. My name came up in the conversation and she shared that I had received her family into the church as members during my pastorate. I had only pastored their family for a few years, but she made the statement that I probably stayed too long at the church or that I should have left a couple of years earlier. He corrected her with kindness saying that nobody but God really knows how many years a man or woman in ministry should stay at a place God has put them and she quickly corrected her statement. He just tried to remind her that nobody knows what God's will is for a person, but God and that person.

If somebody knew more than God I sure wish they would told me that I should have moved in 2008 rather than in 2010. Here's what it would have saved me:

-Several hundred dollars that Becky and I put into the building program to help build the Family Life Center.

-Long hours of labor, cleaning, preparing and planning to get the FLC up, finished, and running along with buying equipment and getting donations to help defray the costs.

-Hours of heartbreak having to bury two of my dearest members and seeing others I loved and pastored for so long suffer and go through physical and finanical hardship.

-Oh yes, and I would never have been able to take the one that spoke these words into the fellowship of the church.

The hardest thing in the world is to leave people you love and a community that you have served in for years. I had only inquired about moving once in my 13 years there and turned down many offers during that time. I thought I would be there for life. But God did have other plans and when He spoke to me, I knew it was time.

I hope you can guess by now I'm just having a little fun with this, but it did really bother me that somebody implied that knew more about God's will for my life than I did. So on that note I say to all of you who think you have heard from God about somebody else find out what He wants for you first. He might just tell you to mind your own business.