By Doug Creamer
For the Salisbury Post

I have moved a lot in my lifetime. It’s not fun. It may be exciting because you are buying a new house, but it’s still not fun. When you are young and energetic it can be manageable. As you get older and have collected more stuff, moving can be a challenge.

Last week, my pastor moved out of his house and I offered to give him a hand. Thankfully, he hired movers to take care of all the heavy lifting. A number of members of our congregation showed up at different times to offer help.

The family is not moving directly into a new place. They are moving into a house temporarily until they can find where God is sending them. Part of the reason for the move was to downsize. They moved most of their stuff to storage and only took the bare necessities to the temporary place.

My pastor’s wife, like my wife and I, loves to grow things. She has quite a few plants in pots that she didn’t want to lose in the move. My wife and I decided that we would adopt her plants while they are in transition. A few more plants here are no big deal. As I was packing the plants up, I heard a sound. I jumped back as something moved. There was an old toad among the plants. I had to stop and take a picture. The toad was not invited to come along.

We know they will be moving again soon. There is a wish list for their next place and hopefully the Lord will open those doors quickly. They know God has a purpose for this temporary stop and they want to discover and fulfill it. Waiting on God and being obedient are never easy things.

As I was driving a load of plants to my house, I was thinking about the high cost of obedience. Abraham was called to leave his home and travel a long distance. God showed him the promised land, but Abraham never got to own any of it. He had to trust the Lord and live in obedience so that one day his descendants would possess the promised land.

The Bible calls us to a life of surrendered obedience. When we invite Jesus into our hearts, we no longer live, but Christ lives in us. If we allow Christ to fully live in us, we might do things sometimes that seem illogical. Jesus is looking at the whole kingdom and may need us to play a role in a place for a period of time to reach a lost or discouraged soul. Consider the lengths God went for you. Sometimes he might need us to go the distance for one of his lost sheep.

My pastor has been teaching us about being inconvenienced. When we are about kingdom business, we are going to be inconvenienced at times. Jesus was inconvenienced when he left heaven to come to earth to provide the way for salvation. It’s not hard to conceive that he would inconvenience us in order to take his message of love to a lost and dying world.

Following Jesus often involves waiting. I hate to wait on God. He seems to move slower than molasses at times. But sometimes God’s plans involve waiting as he works out all the details. That means that he has to work on people’s hearts to get them to the place where they will walk in obedience. He is patient with people, giving them the opportunity to come around, which means that other people are forced to wait on God.

God is always working behind the scenes to bring about his purposes and plans. We can’t always see his hand at work because He has to do the delicate work of changing someone’s heart. He is patient, kind, gentle, and willing to work slowly with us as he is with others. That’s why we have to wait. That’s why we might be inconvenienced. That’s why it is so important for us to be obedient. Someone’s eternal destination could depend on it.

If you feel like God is calling you to obedience, to be inconvenienced, or to wait on him, I want to encourage you to hang in there. God is doing something marvelous. The details often take some time to work out. Trust him with every area of your life and he will do great things in you, through you, and for you. You may have to wait a little, be inconvenienced, and you will definitely have to be obedient if you plan to enter in. I believe God has a great future for you.

Contact Doug Creamer at P.O. Box 777, Faith, NC 28041 or doug@dougcreamer.com .