Here Am I Lord, Send Me....but exactly WHERE did You say to go?!?

As I have said before, one of my motivations for blogging is to open a window for all of those wonderful people at the church I pastor so they can see the events transpired that have also affected their lives. So I think before going any further forward, I will go back to where this all started.

We had just started building a house. It was something we had always talked about wanting to do, and God moved in some amazing ways to open the opportunity or us to finally do it (one of those amazing ways was to sell the house we lived in at the time in only six days!). We were far enough into the building project that there was no turning back, but we were still months from completing the project. After a full day of pastoring and then a full night of carpentry (we did a majority of the work on the house ourselves) I lay down to go to sleep. With all of this going on in our lives, I should have been asleep before my head hit the pillow. Right? Well, that is not how it happened.

It was October of 2005. I cannot explain what brought it on (except for the Holy Spirit, of course), but literally, out of the blue as I lay down that night I could so clearly hear God saying He wanted me in the Army chaplaincy. "But God...I just started building a house that YOU led me to build!!" My heart pounded out of my chest, and I lay awake for at least a couple of hours before I drifted off to a not very restful sleep. The next night the same thing happened, and then it happened the third night (I am kind of thick headed...but I was starting to get the hint here). Finally, I prayed "Okay, God...if you want me to be a chaplain, I will do it...but You have to convince my wife."

Honestly, with that prayer I was finally able to relax and go to sleep for the first time in three days. "Whew!" I thought. "He didn't really want me to become a chaplain. He just wanted to see if I would be willing to do whatever He asked." "Oh...(chuckle, chuckle) that was a good one Father...You really had me there."

After that night, this burden for the Army chaplaincy just more or less waned. It basically went away and I went on living my life: pastoring, parenting, and pounding nails.

At least for a while...