Russell A. Cardwell Online

God told Abram: “Leave your country, your family, and your father’s home for a land that I will show you.”
—Gen 12:1

I know it sounds crazy, but I’m convinced it was the voice of God. It’s the only time I’ve heard God speak in an audible voice.

For many months I had been praying for some clear direction, and God’s silence was getting on my nerves. I had gotten quite adamant one morning and insisted on an answer. “Tell me what you want me to do with my life!” I demanded. “Please.” The response, as ever, was silence.

Days later, while I was working, a voice behind me spoke. “It’s not your life,” it said. “You will know what to do.” There was no one else in the building, and it so clearly responded to my prayer. It made no sense to interpret it as anything but the voice of God. I had absolutely no idea what it meant, but at least it was an answer.

I know God has plans for me, but no matter how much I argue with him, he refuses to let me in on the details. Sometimes he lights the path ahead one step at a time. Other times, he simply opens a door and shoves me through, and I can only keep moving forward until he opens another door, or I reach the wall and have to wait. Often it feels like God has left me to wander in the dark. But in truth, even his silences are purposeful. He uses them to develop our trust and obedience. When I simply trust him and remain obedient, even though the path ahead is dark, I always find that he has invisibly guided me to a destination far better than I expected. Sometimes it has felt like Dorothy awakening in Oz.

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.
—Heb 11:8

God did not give Abraham a road map or an itinerary. He simply told him to go, and promised to tell him when to stop. I think this is how God’s call always works. He gives us no more than we need to know and says, “Go.” In the words of the song, what he asks of us is that we simply “trust and obey.”

Many more months have passed since God spoke to me, and I don’t pretend to know much more about what his words meant. But I have seen enough to know that the journey is worth the effort, that each stop along the way surpasses expectations, and that at our journey’s end, we will gasp in awe at where he has led us. For as Paul put it,

No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him.
—1 Corinthians 2:9

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