The Consequences of Saying "Yes"

If I could have seen down the road where saying "Yes" to a call to preach was going to take me, it might have taken me longer than six months to come around to what I knew God was calling me to do.  Even though back then the call was simply known as a call to preach, we all knew there was more to it than just the preaching.  What I could not grasp in those early days were the places I would end up walking as I said "Yes" to what God was seeking to be about in my life.  Had I really known, I would have been scared enough to run the other way.   

On the night in Alamo when I heard God calling me to preach, I could not conceive of going to be with young parents in the hospital who had lost their first child at birth.  I could not have imagined a moment of pastoring in a situation where a mother and her high school age daughter were killed in a car accident.  And neither could I have figured on being invited into the lives of families as they struggled with broken relationships, threats of violence, and divorce.  Had I really been privy to what was ahead, I would have run the other way and very fast.   

But, of course, we never know what is ahead once we say "Yes" to God.  It may seen to us in the moment that we know the road which we will walk, but it is certain it will not be as we expected.  The way of faith is not a straight line journey from point A to point B, but one that is filled with twists, turns, and landslides.  There is mercy in not knowing what is ahead.  Faith is what enables us to step forward into the things we did not anticipate and grace is what enables us to move through the hard places with faithfulness.  What we may not know how to handle in the beginning will be revealed to us by the Father who has called us to walk the road which takes us there.