Perhaps you’ve seen the advice that, when trying to decide where to go and what to do with your life, you should find where God is at work and go there. I don’t know where this first originated, but I see some version of it from time to time.

The biggest problem I have with this instruction is that it’s not always obvious where God is working. The Bible sometimes likens God’s work to planted seeds. For a while, the bare dirt looks like nothing is going on. But there’s a lot happening underground until green shoots begin to make their way through the soil.

The father of what I called my adopted spiritual family told of how, as a young person, he was giving a girl a ride home from some activity when she asked him if he was saved. He answered somewhat harshly, “Of course I am!” But after he dropped her off, he asked himself what in the world she was talking about. That was the starting point that eventually led to his salvation as he learned more of what it meant to be a Christian. One moment. there was apparently no spiritual interest. But in the moments after an innocent question, the wheels started turning in his mind.

My own father was not an easy person to talk to. I was never courageous enough to speak to him face to face about spiritual things after I became a Christian as a teenager. But when I wrote to him from college, I would often write out salvation verses at the end of my letters. He never said anything about them, so I assumed he just skipped over them.

Fast forward about ten years. My father came to visit us, became gravely ill, and was admitted to the ICU in the hospital for a time. He was open to having our pastor visit, so he came out to see him several times. Then my father astounded us by saying he had believed on Jesus as his Lord and Savior that day when the pastor visited. Our pastor told us later that my father said, “My daughter has been trying to get me to do this for years” and mentioned the verses I used to write out in my letters. All that time, I had thought that there was nothing going on spiritually in his heart. But God was at work.

Adoniram Judson spent seven long and difficult years in Burma before one Burmese person believed in Christ. When you consider how very different the cultures, religions, and ways of thinking were between the American missionary and the Burmese nationals, it’s not altogether surprising that it took so many years of patient work before hearts were able to understand and be willing to change. But in the moment, it had to be discouraging when it looked like no progress was being made.

We have numerous incidents in the Bible of waiting on God while it seemed nothing was happening. Abraham was promised a son twenty-five years before he received Isaac. David was anointed king about fifteen years before actually becoming king and spent much of that time running for his life. The children of Israel were slaves in Egypt 400 years before Moses came. There were another 400 years between the Old and New Testaments where, as far as is recorded in the Bible, there was no prophetic word from God.

Many times, the psalmists asked “How long?” It seemed like God wasn’t moving on their behalf.

Yet God is always working. Jesus said, ““My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working” (John 5:17, NIV). He has not forgotten His promises or forsaken His servants. Sometimes His work is hidden, like yeast in dough, until it becomes obvious.

Sure, there were times Jesus told His disciples to depart and shake the dust of cities off their feet when people wouldn’t hear or receive the truth. But that’s a different thing from looking around and saying, “God doesn’t seem to be working here” and moving on. Sometimes, like the girl who spoke to my spiritual father, or Adoniram Judson in Burma, or Paul, who wanted to preach where Christ was not yet known, God wants to use people to begin a work.

There may be times to leave a field or a particular area of service. It may not have anything to do with whether God is working there or not. In Acts 8, Phillip has a thriving ministry in Samaria. But later in the chapter, an angel of the Lord told him to go down to a desert place where there was one man who was ready to hear the gospel and believe.

There may be times to leave a particular individual alone. Peter tells wives whose husbands are not believers to let their conduct and “the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” be a testimony to him (1 Peter 3:1-6). I don’t think this means she can never share the gospel. But it would be tempting in that situation to urge him too often and come across as nagging or pushing. He needs to see the changes Jesus has wrought in her life. God is still working, but through a different means.

So to me, the important question isn’t so much, “Where is God working so I can join in?” God can work any time, any where, and His work is not always visible to us. I think the better question is, “Where does God want me to work?” It may be somewhere new. It may be where others have begun and need help. It may be in a productive, fruitful field ripe unto harvest. It might be in a difficult field where there are many rocks and weeds to be removed. It may look like nothing is happening. We may not see the results, yet God promises His Word will never return empty, but will accomplish His purpose. We can be “steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).

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