The Narrow Path Ministries

I've made a series of decisions in my life believing that God was calling me to do them. They were all noble callings that involved serving the Kingdom of God. I believed God was going to provide for our needs. These decisions include trusting God with the size of our family, homeschooling, planting a church, and taking a pastoral position in another state. In some cases we had godly people around us believing along with us that God had called us to these decisions. I've essentially failed at all of these ministries. My wife blames me for putting too much on her through the lifestyle we were trying to live. My relationship with my teens is poor and they are far from God. My family lives in two different states while we try to get the family all moved back to our home-state after moving out of state to pastor what turned out to be a very toxic church. We are deeply in debt. I admit to making many mistakes. Honestly looking back I feel neither my wife nor I had the character or skills to live the life that I thought God called us to. But we didn't know that at the time and were just trying to do what we thought was the will of God as best we knew how.

The result of this is that at 40 years old, I'm rather cynical about how God interacts with us. Either I heard God wrong. Or he had some purpose behind my failing at all those things and in all those areas of my life. Or He called me and I just wasn't good enough to live up to His calling. Christians around me trust God to provide for them and to direct their lives. But it's difficult to discriminate between whether those expectations are sentimental or Biblical. Was my belief that God was calling me to do these things mere sentimentality? What exactly is it that we are to trust God with? What does He promise that He will do for us? What are some of the sentimental things that people are trusting God for that He hasn't actually promised to do? I'm not interested in people trying to interpret the meaning of these events in my life. I want to know going forward what I can and cannot expect of God based on what the Bible actually teaches.

doppler68,

You ask a question that is not easy to answer. I'm sure Steve will have some insight. Meantime I would say that, regarding your perceived failures, you are possibly being much too hard on yourself. I believe we are called to be faithful in how we serve the Lord. In preaching, evangelism, or teaching, we are called to do our best (actually, I do not think any of us "do our best", only Jesus did that) and God is responsible for the results. Jesus is our example. Out of all the many thousands He had contact with in His earthly ministry, how many converts did He have in the end? Peter's sermon at Pentecost no doubt surpassed Jesus' convert total by far in one day! Yet Peter did not do it, God did!

A man from our small church decided to go into the ministry and went to Bible college. He then had a series of small church pastorates and was let go from each of them. Finally he was hired by a small church and has been there several years, with some church growth. Perhaps he would have been more successful if he was gifted to be a pastor. Perhaps he is right where God wants him, doing what God wants done.

I have a first cousin, now retired, who felt called to be a pastor of small congregations that could not afford to hire anyone. He spent his career working a full time job and pastoring too. I have never asked him how he felt called to do that, but your post motivates me to ask him that.

One time I tried to get an answer from God by "putting out a fleece". I prayed and flipped a coin, asking God to answer "A" or "B". I did as the coin flip indicated and it did not turn out to be a good decision. Dumb idea I had. You see, I stipulated both choices. Perhaps God was screaming "NEITHER ONE"!

To me, I think God speaks to me through His word, by His Spirit. What is that Spirit inside me telling me to do? Usually it seems to be a sharp poke or a push as I recall what I have read or something that has been said. I try to ignore my own mental impressions.

Hope this may be of some help; my prayers are with you! God bless you and your family in the coming year!

doppler68,

All I can tell you brother is that you are not alone, and yet, as cliche as that may sound, I truly believe that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit know exactly your feelings, your concerns, your problems, and your thoughts. The tender mercies of the Lord are new everyday and yet Satan does his very best to destroy this reality that the Lord has promised us. I can't say that I don't understand your situation because I find many similarities in your post regarding my life as well, so truly, you are not alone. I have many the same problems and concerns that you have.

I often wonder what may have been going through Peter's mind in those few minutes before he was finally executed. Here's a man that at one time was imprisoned and yet an angel came and saved him to fight another day. And yet, Peter was not spared at that particular time. Did Peter lose hope? What was his concern? Was he depressed? I can't imagine what thoughts may have gone through his head. Yet God could.

Like Homer, I want to offer a prayer for you and the situation you find yourself in with your family. While it may not seems like it, I truly believe Jesus is with you; near you - He desires to be with you. He understands. Satan is working over time to get you and me to question God and His word.

It is the peace of God which passes all understanding, that shall keep your heart and mind through Christ Jesus.

Hello Brother doppler68,

My heart goes out to you, as I have made many of the same choices in my life, and some of them certainly did not end in what I envisioned as "success." However, in hindsight, I can see how many of the apparent "failures" may well have been very necessary for the testing of my faith and the carving of my character—and possibly for the edification of others. I realize this is what Christians always say, but I am sharing experience here, not platitudes.

I came from a Christian home where my parents were (and still are) very happy together, very virtuous, very non-legalistic and loving. In fact, they have the closest thing to a perfect marriage that I can imagine. And that is what I imagined I would have. As a very young man, I was trusting God to find me a mate, but was, no doubt, too impatient. I prayed sincerely before entering my first marriage and asked for God's will to be done. However, I was unwise in a number of ways, mostly due to my lack of experience. First, I thought all Christians (including those who were recent converts from hippiedom) were like me—dedicated to God and prepared to pay any price for a lifetime of pleasing Him. Second, having known few women outside my home, I thought all women were essentially like my mother and my sister—that is, very calm, reasonable and rational. Third, I was convinced by my teachers that the second coming was going to occur almost immediately (a common belief in the Jesus Movement, which motivated some to remain "bachelors till the rapture" and others to marry in relative haste—the course that I took).

Though I believed I was trusting and being led by God into the marriage, it was a disaster almost from the first day—and got progressively worse, with my wife having multiple affairs with men that I knew, rejecting our baby girl before and after she was born, and resenting me for having had the audacity to marry her and take away her freedom to roam. I determined that I would not leave the marriage, regardless of my wife's infidelity, but after only two years, she left the baby and me, and filed for divorce. Compared to my dreams of a godly marriage in ministry, this seemed like an abysmal failure, and my daughter from that marriage (now 35) is further from God than are any of my other children.

Obviously, one asks God why such unexpected results would come of a sincere attempt to create a godly home—but, in retrospect, I can see that my problem was my naivete. I entered a very solemn arrangement with very little wisdom or research, and married someone who, had I waited another year, might have acted out her insincerity in such a manner as to prevent my marrying her. I learned (or should have learned) from that experience, that, in addition to prayer, the decision to marry requires wisdom and patience.

When I married my second wife, I especially felt that I had been led into it by God. I actually had a supernatural dream one night which confirmed to me that I should go forward with this relationship. To this day, I think my wife June was an excellent choice and would have been an ideal lifetime partner. Her death six-months after our wedding renders that matter eternally theoretical. While I did wonder, of course, why God would have me marry someone whose number was so soon to come up, I never subsequently doubted that I had made a good choice of a second wife. A marriage that lasts only six months would seem to be nonsensical and to no purpose, except that God used it in two ways: 1) He used that relationship to cure me of my suspicions (from my first marriage) that no woman should be fully trusted, and 2) He definitely used the tragedy to propel me into a more visible and more respected ministry in our local area—resulting in a season of the most fruitful ministry I have known in my 40 years of teaching.

I also believed (and still believe) that God was leading me into my third marriage. This time, I felt, I used proper caution in choosing a wife. She was from a Christian home, she had been on the mission field, and desired to make a career of foreign missions. She was living in a Christian outreach-house, and was regularly involved in street ministry. She seemed to share the radical values by which I live my life (she came from a millionaire's home, but lived entirely by faith with me for 20 years, without ever exhibiting any dissatisfaction with this way of life). Both my wife and I wanted as many children as we could have. If anything, she was more into having a large brood and homeschooling than even I was, though we were both quite on the same page in these areas.

We were surprised and disappointed that, though we were desiring a large brood, God only gave us four children together. This was apparently a larger disappointment to her than to me, because my children and others who know her believe that her inability to have more children was a large factor in her eventual decision to leave the marriage (there were other problems, too, that arose. However, I believe the core of her dissatisfaction was in her inability to get pregnant during the last ten years of our marriage).

There were personality differences between my wife and me, but we were managing to get by in spite of them, and, I thought, things tended to improve over the course of our first fifteen years. One thing that gave my wife and me great satisfaction was the fact that our four children seemed to have a work of God in their lives. All of them, at different times, chose to follow Christ, to be baptized in water, and to be prayed for to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. They had a desire to read their Bibles. We never required them to do so. From the time they were about five or six years old, each one embarked on a personal Bible-reading program. My girls each read through the Bible twice before they were twelve. My oldest son read through the Bible, and many Christian books. His heroes were Ray Comfort and Billy Graham, and, when he was about ten, he had me take him out on the streets each Saturday night to evangelize. Our family appeared to be a model family, and I felt that what I now had in my home was worth the wait and the previous disappointments. My children wanted to be missionaries, which was the greatest thing we could have prayed for.

When my wife's mental issues began to manifest, it was alarming. Her behavior alienated all the children from her, and I began having difficulty holding the family together emotionally. I must not give the details, but when my wife totally lost her soul (by that phrase, I mean that the person she had been for 20 years suddenly disappeared and was replaced by another person—I suspect a demon, but I don't wish to claim more knowledge of mysteries than I possess), she left the kids, me, her faith, and all her former friends without a word of explanation. Today, more than seven years later, I truly believe that she still does not even know why she left.

All of my children, except the youngest, who was ten, experienced spiritual crises upon her departing. I left the ministry to stay home with the kids, but since three of them were teenagers, I could not keep them under my nose at all times. They were alienated from their Christian home-schooled friends—who treated our family like a group of lepers (divorce was not understood among the Christian home-schoolers that we had known). My older children developed friendships with unsaved neighbors and people they met through them. Soon some of them were drinking and experimenting with drugs. Within a year, two of them talked frequently about being suicidal. One of them said she was no longer a Christian, and two others were very tentative about whether they were still believers. Of the hardships I had known in my adult life, this was the most emotionally crushing to me.

I am often asked whether it is more difficult to lose a wife in death or in divorce. It doesn't require even a moment's hesitation to give the answer. Divorce is more emotionally taxing by a factor of, probably, at least ten. Consider the differences:

1. When your wife leaves, you experience the ultimate rejection from the person whom you love the most and who should appreciate you the most; when your wife dies, she does not reject you.

2. When your wife leaves, Christians become highly suspicious of your spirituality and character. If you are in the ministry, this can be the end of your career; when your wife dies, nobody thinks the worse of you, and most Christians admire your fortitude.

3. When your wife leaves, there is a tug-of-war for the children and the family assets. As long as she lives, she will exert an ungodly influence on your children and your grandchildren; not so when your wife dies.

4. When your wife leaves, she betrays her faith and endangers her soul; when your godly wife dies, you have no fear for her soul.

5. When your wife leaves, you wonder just how long it may be before she will come to her senses (surely she will!) and decide to return home. This lack of closure can last for years, and you never know whether you are supposed to see yourself as a single man or as a waiting husband; when your wife dies, there is instant closure. You know she won't be coming back, and you know your status;

6. When your wife leaves, you face the likely trauma of eventually seeing her with another man, and knowing that she is intimate with another as you and she once were; not so when your wife dies. She remains your faithful wife perpetually.

I remained almost entirely out of ministry for a year, and was gradually drawn back into it only by incessant invitations to speak, which I accepted and executed without much joy or emotion for at least a couple more years. When my ex-wife remarried (her second marriage lasted less than a month), I felt emotionally released from her and began to mentally adjust to being a single man, possibly for life.

Almost all of my dreams have been shattered while trusting in God for all things. However, I still believe without reservation that it is better to trust in God than to have all of one's dreams come true. I consider that I am wiser, humbled and more compassionate as a result of my marriage failures. These are good things, and might not have been obtained through less painful and less humiliating experiences.

In the midst of these tragedies, there have been consolations. God has allowed me to continue to minister, as is my heart's desire, and has even expanded the breadth of my ministry's reach. I receive letters and emails most days from people telling me how their lives have been transformed, either through attending the Great Commission School, which I used to direct, or through the radio or internet ministry. Some say it is my life, more than my teaching, that has impacted them. Even if I did not receive such mail, I would have reason to believe that there has been lasting fruit from my warfare. God is a good economist. He will not waste the sorrows of those who trust in Him. "They who trust Him wholly find Him wholly true."

Most of my children are now professing Christian faith again, though the wind seems to have been knocked out of them more severely, and more long-term, than it was knocked out of me. They had, perhaps, less of a foundation than I had, to weather the storm. At least they still are affectionate toward me, and have said flattering things about me to their friends and mine, like "Of all the Christian men I know, my dad is the most consistent;" and "My dad really lives by what he teaches;" and "All Christians talk about unconditional love, but my dad is the only one I know who does it." When I hear these reports coming back to me, it tells me that my testimony is at least having an effect on my children, who are still struggling. That is some gratification, though, when I think of their earlier zeal for God, their present struggles break my heart.

I think the one constant that has pulled me through great turbulence has been that I have decided to trust God, and that this trust is not negotiable. It does not come up for reconsideration when surprises and disappointments come along. The discipline of faith is to rest in the faithfulness of God. However hard or disappointing things may get, resting in God and waiting upon Him is always an available option. There are promises that such resignation will result in an exchange of strength—His for ours (Isaiah 40:31; 30:15).

This trust in God means that I believe Him when He says, "No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly" (Psalm 84:11/ 34:10/ Matt.6:33). If this is true (and it is impossible for God to lie), then it simplifies my duties considerably. I need only to walk uprightly—fear God, seek His kingdom—and whatever I have will be the best thing God can give me (though it may come in disguise). Hudson Taylor said, "God always gives His very best to those who leave the choice with Him." How do I know it is the best? God said so. Of course, my errors and my sins may prevent God's giving me the first good thing on His list for me. But even the reversals caused by my mistakes may be the best remedial thing that God can bring to me. Life is a school and a test. Learning from our mistakes is part of the course. We fail some tests, but we will never flunk out of the program, unless we unnecessarily surrender our confidence in God.

In other words, Brother, my vote is for you to continue trusting in God, and walking uprightly. You may not see the fruit even in this life—and things may go from seeming-bad to seeming-worse, but "let us not grow weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart" (Gal.6:9).

doppler68 wrote:I want to know going forward what I can and cannot expect of God based on what the Bible actually teaches.

Doppler68, if you are still visiting here, (or anyone else interested in the subject), there is an excellent teaching by Steve on this found at Digital Ministries. I just listened to it this evening & found it very instructive and encouraging.

Here is the link: Divine Guidance - it's lecture 11 of the "Knowing God" series.