Sitting on the Couch in Obedience

Today’s Scripture Readings:
OT: Esther 9-10
NT: Luke 18
W&W: Psalm 58


Today’s Reflection:

From: When God Takes too Long; Joseph Bentz; pp 76-78

Dan, a successful Christian businessman, has an MBA and is an energetic, take-charge person. When he was 31 years old, his career was thrown off-stride when he lost his job with a major corporation. After several months of demoralizing unemployment, he landed a job with a business he thought was run by a Christian, but he quickly realized the company was riddled with unethical practices. He quit after only one week.

Unemployed for a second time, in eligible for unemployment benefits because of having willingly resigned from the second company, and running out of money to pay his bills, Dan prayed hard for God’s direction. He had done all he knew to do to find a new job, but nothing worked out. His worry deepened, edging toward despair. He says, “I began to pray. I asked God to direct me. I told him I would do what he wanted me to do but that he would have to show me the way. Nothing happened. My prayers seemed to rise no higher than the ceiling.”

Knowing Dan was unemployed, some friends in his men’s Bible study urged him to take this opportunity to pursue his interest in teaching English in China for a mission organization. However he couldn’t afford the cost of the three months of training or the living expenses involved, so that idea was out. After attending a Bible study one day, Dan confided his frustrations to a friend, complaining there was something seriously wrong in his life.

“How do you know something is wrong?” his friend asked.

“Because I’m at the end of my rope and God isn’t saving me. I have no job, and my money is running out. I’ve asked God to direct me, but he isn’t doing anything.”

“How do you know he isn’t doing anything?”

“I’ll tell you how I know,” said Dan, losing patience. “Because yesterday I did nothing. Nothing! I woke up, went downstairs and sat on the couch. I feel like a bum and a failure. I’ve tried everything I know to try. If God was doing something, He wouldn’t have let me sit there all day, waiting.”

“Maybe you didn’t sit there long enough,” said his friend.

This sounded absurd. Dan didn’t want to sit there at all, let alone longer. He went home feeling desperate. He prayed to the Lord, “I know you’re real, and I know that you see me and care for me. I don’t know what to do. I’ve pursued all my opportunities. You seem silent and distant. Please show me what to do. I will wait until you make the next move.”

For Dan, this was the scariest prayer of all. He said, “I didn’t know if I’d have to wait an hour, a day, a week, or a year. But I knew I was committed to not making a move until God did something. Would an angel appear? Would someone come to the door and offer me the perfect job? Would I starve to death on the couch?

Dan sat on his couch for one day, then another, then another. His roommates came and went. The sun rose. The sun set. It rose again. It set again. He said, “I wish I could say it was a spiritual experience, but it wasn’t. At least not in the way you may be thinking. I didn’t fast and pray. I didn’t get on my knees and seek the face of God. I didn’t spend hours singing and praising God for his goodness. No, I just waited in quietness and stillness. I felt numb.”

When the breakthrough finally came, things moved quickly. One afternoon the telephone rang, and a friend who rarely called was on the line. He asked how Dan was doing. “I’ve been sitting on the couch for days,” said Dan.

“Would you be interested in a job?” asked his friend.

Dan was interested. The work was temporary, a project that would make good use of his degree. The pay was exactly the amount Dan needed to live on and, if he chose, to compete the training for the trip to China. The project would last for three months, which was (coincidentally?) exactly the length of time before the China training program started. He took the job. He went to China.

Dan said, “I went from sitting on the couch one day to having a job and preparing for a year in China. Who could have imagined that sitting on a couch and doing nothing would produce such a flurry of activity and opportunity? Don’t ask me to explain the theology of it all. I only know I learned a lesson about what it means to ‘wait on God’ that I’ve never heard preached in church.”

He had learned to take his station and let God do battle for him. He learned to truly trust the Lord. “At the core of my faith was a big fear that maybe God couldn’t make something out of nothing, even though I was taught that He’s the Author of creation. The answer to that fearful question never became clear for me until the world I had created – and was feverishly trying to maintain – fell apart and came to a halt.”


This Week’s Scripture to Memorize:
Isaiah 53.8-9: By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.