A Light to our path

It had been one of those weeks in which I had been highly frustrated with ministry; I didn’t feel like I could see the big picture. Nothing seemed to be going right and in fact, everything seemed to be going rather wrong. I was sitting in the office of one of my mentors expressing my frustration when he shared this thought with me. He began by quoting Psalm 119 when he said, “His word is a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path.” He said that perhaps the problem was that I was wanting something other than a lamp, a spotlight that would blaze ahead, clear the fog and show me the full road. Then he said that if I held this scripture in mind I would realise that the Lord was only going to show me what the “lamp” would, one-step at a time. I had to trust that God knows what He is doing, that He knows where He is going and that I must allow Him to be the one that would lead me.

This simple explanation has stuck with me over the years. It is what makes it easier to be obedient to take the next step, even if it doesn’t always make sense. It is with this in mind that we often pray and ask God what our next step must be. In 2013, during our Church Leadership School, we were doing the school as our ‘next step’ to France, thinking that the Lord would send us at the end of that year. We were very surprised then in April (a few months before Luc was born) when we felt like the next step would be for me to look for a 6 month post at a school to teach history. We didn’t see how this would take us closer to France, but never the less we decided that if the Lord was leading us in this direction we would follow.
​
I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when I open the church announcement bulletin the next Sunday. There it was, exactly what we felt the Lord leading us to. Hatfield Christian School had place an advertisement for a history teacher, they were looking for someone to full a 6-month post! We were amazed! Needless to say, I applied and got the job. I started at the school a week after Luc was born, rushing from my last class each day to visit him in his incubator at the hospital.
​
My time with the school (and later Olivia’s as well) became a real turning point in our lives. It was a place in which we received healing from the trauma we went through with Luc’s birth. It was a place in which we saw the love of God modeled and lived out in a community that was more like family than we had ever seen before. We were privileged to engage with students who loved the Lord as well as those who were only just beginning to find Him. It was a place that has prepared us and blessed us beyond what we could ever have imagined. Yet it was never a part of our plan. Reflecting on our journey, Hatfield Christian School was critical in our journey to France but we only got there through trusting the Lord for His next step. The rest of our journey could be summed up in that very way, allowing the Lord to be the lamp and trusting Him one step at a time. 

​Read more...