My life can be described as a series of strange decisions.

The strangest of which is undoubtedly Jesus.

I felt a call to ministry, yet i chose to attend a secular university.

I fell in love and got married at age 21 while still in college.

Upon graduation i decided to apply for jobs in ministry rather than attending seminary.

i took a job at a church in WI; seven hundred miles from home and a very different church environment than i was used to.

we decided to have kids: a very strange decision indeed!

we decided to share a house with another couple; our dearest friends (who, incidentally, made the very strange decision to leave everything behind in NY and move out to WI to share life with us.)

i left my job with that amazing, loving church community; i left the generous salary they provided, the insurance, the home they let me live in; all at a very difficult time in the life of our church.

i took my wife and 2 children to Kansas City and then to the Charlotte area to be prayer missionaries.

i chose to work ridiculously hard at a job that was very difficult to explain for no promise of money whatsoever.

we decided to have more kids.

we decided to become Lutheran! I like to say it that way for the effect. We joined ourselves to an awesome, unique congregation that happened to be associated with the Lutheran church.

i chose to partner with that awesome congregation in ministry: working with a “charismatic”, “prophetic”, “day and night”, “intercessory” prayer ministry during the week and a “Lutheran”, “liturgical”, perhaps, “emerging” church on Sundays.

i chose to leave my role as prayer missionary; taking a step back from the very tight knit community that surrounded that ministry.

i chose to begin developing my own ministry of music and word with all kinds of crazy ideas about the Church being bigger, broader and different than traditionally defined.

when the prayer-missionary ministry closed and all of my colleagues and friends (even my very closest friends) moved away, i decided to stay. 

i decided to record a CD that would cost well over $10,000 when i didn’t have a dime to spare.

the latest installment in my series of strange decisions: i have left my job with that beautiful, supportive church community; i have left the generous financial support they have given me, the joy of gathering with them regularly, the privilege of leading with them in worship, the fun of partnering with my friends there in ministry on a daily basis.

why am i writing this list? because these are very hard decisions to make. They take a toll on the heart, and i just recently made one, and i’m processing through it.

why have i made all these strange decisions? one reason: cuz’ i think God told me to.

i’m sure i haven’t done everything right or discerned God’s voice perfectly, but, God has met me in all of these decisions. Most of them did not appear to be the smartest thing to do in order to benefit myself, but i have lived in the abundance of God. I can honestly say that God has met and exceeded all of our needs.

i bumped into a friend at a coffee shop the other day. we discussed some of this strange journey i’ve been on. He said, “You should write a book on how to be a prayer missionary living by faith!” I told him,

“I don’t know about a ‘how to’ but i could certainly write a book about ‘how-God’ has led and provided for me.”

i don’t think my life is in any way a “how-to”. I don’t even believe that is the spirit behind the “imitation” that Paul calls followers to. i pray, rather, that my life is a “how-God”: this is how God has led and met and provided for me and my family. You have a “how-God” too. He has led you, met you, provided for you. Let’s not look at one another’s stories and devalue our own. Let’s not try to copy each other as if human life with Jesus were cut-and-paste-able. But do let us be inspired by one another; by how-God has moved in our lives. Let it give us the guts to keep on believing that He speaks, and that we hear and that He is worth all the strange decisions in the world.