The Rumble Strips On The Narrow Road

Sometimes when we look at Scripture, we can fall into the habit of oversimplifying things.  I heard a pastor one time whose wife had been murdered in a home invasion confess that before this tragedy, he wasn’t a very good pastor because when people would come to him with struggles, he would rattle off bible verses to them but he wouldn’t sympathize or empathize with them.  When we know the principles of the word of God, it’s sometimes easy to just toss verses at someone, instead of relating to them.  When people are struggling, they don’t necessarily need a doctrine or an ideology.  They need someone to let them know that they’re not alone in the battle, that somebody understands.  Yeshua’s final words of comfort for us at the end of the Gospel of Matthew is that He would be with us forever.

Recently, I have found myself in a somewhat of a strange place.  I am certain I am walking in God’s will for my life.  I have many people who continue, thankfully, to affirm that.  In fact, it’s been rare in my 27 years of walking with the Lord that I have had doubts about whether I was on the right path.  I have known of many believers who have struggled for significant stretches of their lives with wondering what God wants them to do.  I got the call to ministry the moment I gave my life to Yeshua.  Immediately after I prayed to receive Yeshua as Lord and Saviour, the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) said to me, as if He was standing right beside me “You had such a hard time reconciling Me and your Jewish identity, now I’m sending you back to your people.”  I was commissioned right then and there to preach and teach and there have been rare times in my life when I did not sense that I was walking in it. 

That doesn’t mean however it has been always been easy (rarely in fact), enjoyable or without struggle and doubt.  Not the direction but rather if I’m doing it right, if I’m doing it in my own flesh.  You can be in the will of God and yet be on the periphery of it.  While I was at a recent city-wide prayer breakfast, I got this picture of being on the narrow path that God has called me to but instead of being in the middle of it, I feel like I’m on the rumble strips.  Going in the right direction but not in complete alignment with God’s will.  I’ll have conversations with people and not quite connect with them and then wonder if I’ve offended them somehow.   I’ll do something and it feels a little strained or my attitude won’t be right.  It’s as if I’m not quite in the centre of God’s will and it’s a hard place to be in.

Something that I’ve been trying to meditate on over the past couple of years is accepting the unconditional love of God.  The orphan spirit is one of the greatest plagues in the Body of Messiah.  We feel that we have to earn God’s acceptance and favour.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  We are unconditionally accepted and loved by the Father.  Yeshua died, “while we were yet sinners.” (Rom 5:8).  Paul then tells us that “But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Messiah Yeshua our Lord.” (Rom 8:37-39)  The world tells us we have to earn love and acceptance, whereas God gives it to us freely and unconditionally through agape love, the most noble kind in Greek thought.  In fact, “we love because He loved us first” (1John 4:19).  One of the problems we run into is that when things don’t go well in our lives, we automatically believe we’re doing something wrong.  We think that because we are saved, everything should start going well for us, that somehow faith in Yeshua eliminates problems.  I remember when I was a young believer and had just finished a recruiting contract for an insurance company.  I had this idea of starting a company that would hire out contract recruiters to companies who didn’t need one on staff full time.  I had one meeting with one of my prospects who I had worked with and she told me some of the challenges my idea would face and so I dropped it.  I figured back then that if it was from God, it should start with no issues, that it would be easy.  Where on earth in the bible is that written?  Nowhere.  Scripture tells us we will struggle, fight, have opposition, be frustrated until we finally overcome – at anything.  In this sin-fallen world, we are made for struggle.  In heaven, no more problems.  Here though, a gezunt (healthy) amount.

So, whenever we are pursuing the will of God, we must accept difficulty and opposition.  I can be unconditionally loved by God and still experience challenges, frustrations, difficulties, disappointments and failures.  That’s because there is a whole kingdom whose sole aim is to oppose and frustrate God’s people until He destroys it.  By allowing us to be frustrated and experience failure, God can teach us how to overcome and learn things we didn’t know.  There’s a process in leadership called PDCA – plan, do, check and adjust.  Whenever we are working on something, we’re always evaluating and course correcting.  The problem is, most people go through life just doing.  No planning, no checking and no adjusting to find the right formula and so they just keep failing and eventually give up.

The Japanese have a word kaizen, which means improvement and denotes continuous improvement.  It’s the idea that we never arrive but are always striving toward the higher calling, for betterment, for greater excellence.  This concept is sorely lacking within the Body today.  Our disproportionate emphasis on grace has dulled our competitiveness and has allowed the enemy to take control of every lever of power and influence in society.  Instead of disciplining ourselves and constantly trying to improve, we just leave it all up to God.  The end of the Gospel of Mark, it says that “And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them, and confirmed the word by the signs that followed” (Mark 16:20).  Notice how it says He worked with them, not for them.  God works through us and as we empty ourselves, He can fill us up with skill, talent, gifting and through the Ruach, power and authority.  However, if we don’t get up off the couch, He’s not going to be able to get it done, or He’ll choose someone else and we miss out on the blessings.

So what are these rumble strips on the narrow path?  They are God’s signal we have kaizening to do (part of the new japanenglish language I’m inventing).  Yes, we can be on the right path and in God’s will, but we have PDCAing to do.  We have improvements to be made by evaluating all aspects of our journey and finding out how to improve.  How do we produce more fruit of the Spirit?  We read our bibles, pray, read books on this subject and listen to audios or podcasts with people or get mentors who have good results in what we need to grow in.  Do we need to improve how to relate to people?  We can read How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie.  Do we need to improve our vision of what possibilities we can achieve then the Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz would be an excellent resource.  If we want to understand people’s personalities?  Spirit-Controlled Temperaments by Tim LaHaye transformed how I understood people.  There is more information out there than ever before to help us grow in the areas we need to.  Scrolling through social media might entertain us but all leaders are readers of material that actually help them gain new information to improve their lives.  Warren Buffet is one of the richest men in the world because he reads 6-8 hours a day and it’s not memes on Facebook.

As we pursue the will of God for our lives, we must remember that it will be hard because we are learning something new and need to acquire new skills and knowledge, but also that we will have opposition from the kingdom of darkness.  Rom 8:37 says we are to be more than conquerors or overcomers.  To conquer or overcome means to fight and that means being in shape.  When I started training in kick boxing and went to my first workout at 16, my stomach was so sore from all the sit ups and leg lifts I did that I had trouble sitting up for a week.  I got used to it after a while though and one day had a six-pack (I still have a washboard stomach today but there’s a few towels on it now).  Nothing worthwhile in this life is easy and in order to master our craft, we have to be diligent students and performers.  God has called us to be in His army.  A soldier disciplines himself to be ready for battle.  Paul exhorted Timothy “Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Messiah Yeshua.  No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.  Also if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules.  The hard-working farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of the crops.  Consider what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.”  (2Tim 2:3-7).  Those rumble strips that we veer onto are indications there are weaknesses we need to work on to better represent Messiah in our calling and to fulfill our task.  When we stop growing, we start dying as there is no static state in life.  Our fruit is either ripening or rotting.  As we pay attention to the signals in our life that we need to course correct, we will find we are much more effective in all that we do.  May God give us the sensitivity to understand what He is telling us and the strength to respond correctly.  Shalom.

Darryl Weinberg