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Finding Your Calling – Part 3: Need More Light?

This is Part 3. Check out Part 1 and Part 2 first. 🙂

It was a Sunday afternoon in 1999. I was sitting at home, a 16 year old, about to enter my 4th year in high school. In a few months I would be applying for college and I still had not decided what course to take.

It seemed like my entire future hinged on this decision. It was all I heard about from my teachers and my classmates were just as concerned as I was. 

Like I sometimes do when I get my thoughts in an infinite loop of worry, I was watching TV to numb my mind. 

The doorbell rang. I opened the door to find Pastor Jim Laffoon, a visiting pastor and prophet from the US. He was staying with our next door neighbors, the Murrells. 

“Is your dad home?”

“Yes, but he’s asleep.” (He sometimes liked to nap after preaching on Sundays.) “Should I wake him?”

“No, I’ll wait for him to get up.”

“Would you like to come in?”

He followed me to the den where he saw my collection of various World War II books and my 28 volume Combat and Survival series. 

“You like studying military history, huh?”

“Yeah, if only teachers asked me about it more, I’d get higher grades.”

He then proceeded to tell me many stories from his own reading and his own experience, having been a paratrooper himself.

Before I knew it forty-five minutes had passed.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting. Do you want me to go wake him now?”

“Nah, I’m enjoying this. Let me tell you a Bible verse.”

“…okay…” 

“Proverbs 4:18 says, ‘The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.’ Do you know what that means?”

“That we should walk in the light?” (I was trying to sound spiritual and insightful.)

“Yeah, that’s part of it. It means that when we walk with Jesus, the light we have might still be a little dim. But as we continue to walk with Him, it gets brighter and brighter. You don’t need to see everything down the path. You just keep walking with Him and with each step you’ll have more light to see where you should go.”

“…huh…” (I wondered where that came from, but was slowly making connections.)

“I better go. Thanks for the talk!”

“…huh…bye.” 

I saw him out. And I stopped worrying about my university, my course, my career, and my future. It wasn’t until later that I realized he never got to speak to my dad.

Since then, whenever I worry about making a decision, I ask myself one question:

Can I decide now?

If the right option is apparent, then I decide already.

If it’s not obvious, then I wait until it is. Because I know that in Christ, by the time I need to make the decision, there will be more light to see the way.

Are you worried about a decision now? Maybe what your calling is? Be faithful where you are now. Just keep walking this life of faith. When the time to decide comes, you’ll have enough light to see where to go.

It gets brighter.
It gets brighter.
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