The Land Of The Unfamiliar

Life is a journey into the unfamiliar. We prepare for known territories, but God swerves the direction and puts us in places we need to be for His glory. I have a dear friend who I've known since we were teens who pastors in Alaska. Why God could take him from the comforts of SC and the familiar to a place thousands of miles from his home and place his wonderful family into the unfamiliar is a mystery to many, but he was obedient and went and God has blessed them together for over 30 years ministry in that unfamiliar territory. It's become home to them now and SC is just a place to visit. It's amazing what God can do when we go into the land of the unfamiliar.

One of my converts in ministry recently moved to a pastorate far from home. He left a great church to go to an even greater one with new challenges ahead. He has never pastored in this new territory before, but allowed God to move him from the safety of a 10 year journey to one in an area he had never been in before. I am very proud of the fact that he took the challenge to make a great church even greater and I expect to hear great things as his work progresses. He chose not to play it safe and stepped into the will of God, whose path lead him far from home, but into the pulpit and ministry the Lord had prepared for him.

If you serve the Lord and have received the call to preach you have to be open to what God says and does. It's not always easy to pack up and move your family or to move away from your family to obey that call. When my dad was called to leave SC to go to Arkansas as State Youth Director it was a challenge. The same when he went to Iowa for the same position 5 years before that. He had to leave the familiar to obey the call of God. During the time he was gone many of his peers received promotion after promotion. It took several years before we were able to come back to SC to the familiar. But I will never forget some of the places we lived or some of the people I met even though I was a child. What an adventure!

Sometimes the journey has some bumps and ditches along the way. The unfamiliar seems so uncharted that we question why God put us there. As we are trying to figure out all the stuff we are facing, those dark areas of the unknown get darker and the pitfalls get deeper. Thankfully with every temptation to give up, the Lord makes a way to escape. He can get us back on course if we leave the driving to Him.

There is a harvest field out there and God needs somebody to glean it. Instead of waiting for some comfortable position to come open to fulfill ministry, take a step into the unfamiliar. Get your stuff together, pray up, and seek the face of God for His directions. If He calls you to go into uncharted waters He will be the wind in your sails. If He calls you to be a spiritual trail blazer, He will give you the tools you need to make a difference. If you fail, it's not because you didn't try or God forsook you. It may be God used you as a doorkeeper for the next visionary to succeed. It's not a glamorous life, but if your prepared to be used by God, something wonderful can happen in the land of the unfamiliar.