Podcast Episode 24 – Without Compromise (part 7)

This week’s episode builds on Monday’s article, part five in the series titled “Without Compromise.” Here is the transcript of the podcast:

Have you struggled with compromise or conformity? That’s the ongoing question we are talking about in this series.  Today’s discussion is the seventh in the series, and all of them are based on a study of Daniel chapter 1 and correspond to the articles posted each week on the Leadership Ezra website.  The big idea we are discussing is how you can navigate pressure without deviating from your values – specifically, the pressure to compromise or conform in an unhealthy or immoral way.  It’s really a discussion of how to lead and live with excellence without compromising your faith.  And today, that begins by trusting God with the outcomes.

In the matching article to this podcast on the Leadership Ezra website this week, I talked about an experience in my ministry of Christian Education that put me in the position of having to decide whether or not I was going to trust God with the outcome of that experience. If you want to get the full story of what happened that led to what I’m about to talk about, you’ll need to read the website article.  But here’s where I left off.  I went home that day and told my family that my position had been eliminated and that it would end in 28 days. But then, with a smile on my face, I told them that God had a perfect plan for us that we could trust.  I said that He was doing this for a reason, and therefore, we could fully trust Him and didn’t need to have any anxiety.  We prayed together as a family and committed to having peace and confidence in what He would do.

The next day (on a Wednesday), I prayed, and then I updated my resume and began to look for places to apply.  By Thursday afternoon, I had copies of my resume ready to go and in envelopes, with about a dozen different places to send them. We prayed over them, put them in the mail, and consciously determined to trust God with the outcome, choosing not to have any anxiety.

The next day, my daughter came downstairs and told us that she had been praying and that God had impressed on her that I would be getting a phone call the following week on Tuesday and would have an interview on Wednesday.  We assured her that God could do that, but that even if He didn’t, we would still trust Him. She was adamant that that’s what God had told her He would do.  The next Tuesday morning, as she left for work, all she said was, “Text me when you get a call.”  I left right after her for work, and when I sat down in my office, almost immediately the phone rang.  You guessed it.  It was a phone call from a school in another state, and I had an hour-long conversation with someone who finished the call by asking me if could do a conference call interview with their search committee the next day.  My daughter’s response when I told her was simply, “I told ya!”  The end result was that literally 3 weeks later, we unloaded a moving truck in a different state, starting a new job at a new school.  I didn’t know until after the fact that my resume landing on their desk was just as much a miracle of God’s timing for them as it was for me.  We were to learn over the next couple of years that there were clear reasons why God had uprooted and moved us so quickly, but that wouldn’t have happened the same way if we hadn’t been committed to fully trusting Him for the outcomes and then responding accordingly.

 That’s the same mindset that Daniel and his friends exhibited in Daniel chapter 1. They were uprooted from their homes and families, against their will, and taken to a place that was unfamiliar, lonely, and possibly antagonistic to their own culture and faith.  Yet they chose to have an attitude of complete trust in what God was doing.  In their case, they refused to compromise their faith by adhering to their dietary laws and trusted that God would still keep them healthy.  They refused to bow to an idol of the king even when the consequence was a fiery furnace.  And years later, Daniel refused to cease praying to God even when the consequence was a lion’s den.  In all of those cases, they trusted God for the outcome, regardless of what the outcome might be.  They knew that God had the best plan in mind for them, and they trusted wholeheartedly.

What this teaches us is the importance of trusting God for the right outcome in our own circumstances.  The hard part is often trusting Him even when the outcome might be different than what we anticipated or wanted.  But if you and I believe that God is real and that the Bible is true, then we can completely trust what God is doing.  That means, therefore, leaving the outcome in His hands because He has a purpose that He intends to accomplish for His benefit and for ours.  We still need to act, doing what is right, and intentionally planning and moving wisely toward the goal and purpose in front of us, but all while keeping in mind that God – not us – is in control of the outcome and end result.

So, when you face circumstances that are frightening, unknown, or unexpected, Daniel has modeled for us how to lean into God, and how to be confident that He is going to do what is best.  Knowing that, we can trust Him for the outcome.  That doesn’t mean that we stop doing the right things.  In fact, the outcome God brings about is typically directly tied to how we are living in obedience to Him, so what we really need to do is to first obey God without compromising and then trust Him for the outcome. 

The bottom line is God has a purpose with you in mind, so you can trust Him for the outcome and let go of the anxiety in the circumstances.  I also think it’s a lot easier to do this if you take some time and make an “altar” list – a list of personal experiences where God has worked in an unexpected way, as touchstones to strengthen your confidence in God, to serve as your constant reminder that you can trust God with the outcomes. Learn to see and trust His hand at work in your life.