In 1984, when I was 21 years old, a newspaper reporter interviewed me about preaching at the fountain at Radford University. I had been preaching there during lunch, rain, snow, or shine, sharing what God had done in my life and what I believed He wanted others to know.
In that article, I told the reporter something that I had almost forgotten over the years. I had asked God to let me know if He ever wanted me to stop preaching. I was willing to continue as long as He wanted me to, but I was also willing to stop if He told me to.
More than forty years later, when I found that newspaper article and shared it with Valerie, she reminded me of something. God eventually did tell me to stop. And I listened.
As I write about in my book, The Road That Changed Me, ministry became an important part of my life. I loved preaching, teaching, praying with people, and helping them come to know God. Over the years, I served in different churches and eventually became a priest in the Charismatic Episcopal Church. I started a parish and continued doing what I believed God had called me to do.
Eventually, I closed the parish. Some time later, I came to recognize that God was asking me to lay down the ministry itself.
Those were two separate events. Closing the parish did not mean I had stopped believing in my calling. But later, when I knew God wanted me to lay down the ministry, I did.
I had a family to support, and I needed to give that responsibility the attention it deserved. I loved being a priest, and I loved the people I served. But I knew what God was asking me to do.
It wasn’t that I had stopped loving God or that I no longer believed He had called me to preach. I still believe His gifts and calling are irrevocable. But I also believe that following God means listening to Him, even when His direction changes.
What struck me when Valerie reminded me of that newspaper article was the connection between those two moments in my life. At 21, standing at a fountain on a college campus, I had told God I would stop if He wanted me to. Years later, after serving as a priest, He told me to lay down the ministry.
And I did.
I didn’t remember that promise when I made the decision to lay down the ministry. It was only when I read the article again, more than forty years after it was written, that I recognized how those two moments were connected.
I have spent many years since then sitting in church pews rather than standing behind a pulpit. But I have never stopped loving God, and I have never stopped believing that He has a purpose for my life.
One of the things I have come to understand through the years, and something I write about throughout The Road That Changed Me, is that following God doesn’t always mean continuing down the road we expected. Sometimes He leads us in a different direction.
At 21, I asked God to tell me when to stop.
Years later, He did.
And I listened.
Read the earlier story and see the 1984 newspaper article: The Young Man at the Fountain.
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