A guest blogger shares how God counseled him and his family from the couch of a pastor’s office to the mission field.

We found ourselves in the Valley of Decision, where we put an end to laboring in vain and began listening to God.

It was a Monday morning. I remember every detail: the humid North Carolina air, the emptiness of the house which mirrored the uncertainty in my recent decision to go to Bible school, the random number on my caller ID that was most certainly another debt collector.

But mostly, I remember Anxiety—Anxiety so real it felt like a force literally standing in the room with me, pushing me to the floor. Dropping to my knees under its weight, I met Anxiety’s cousin, Confusion, whose goal was to end my seemingly short trip down the road of full-time ministry.

This was the Valley of Decision. Unbeknownst to me, I was soon to be lifted up by a power I had never experienced before.

A couple years earlier, my wife and I had turned from a life of excess and worldliness to a complete surrender to Jesus. We had told Jesus that our lives were no longer our own and He could have us completely, whatever that looked like and wherever that took us. All we wanted was Jesus, and we meant it.

Over the next two years, we served faithfully in our local church, joined a church planting team in a neighboring city, and chased hard after God. We led Bible studies, attended conferences, and evangelized in our community. We were confident of God’s leading in the decisions we were making.

Then, the church plant ended in a painful split. The Bible studies grew stale. Our financial security degraded as the daily debt collection calls increased.

But the weeks leading up to this particular humid Monday were marked by an insatiable desire in me to be led by the Lord and not by my own understanding. Psalm 127 had challenged me:

“Unless the Lord builds, the builders labor over it in vain.” – Psalm 127:1

I was very familiar with what laboring in vain felt like, and I knew that wasn’t the way of the Kingdom. I had noticed in Scripture that one of the defining characteristics of the world changers of our faith was that they heard from God and obeyed His leading.

• Abraham obeyed God when He said, “Go from your country… to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).
• Moses spoke with God face to face and obeyed when He sent him to Pharaoh (Exodus 3).
• Gideon heard and obeyed the Lord’s command, “Go in the strength you have and deliver Israel from the power of Midian” (Judges 6:14).
• Paul obeyed the night vision from the Lord and “set out for Macedonia, concluding that God had called (him) to evangelize them” (Acts 16:9-10).

I was confident that if I could hear from God the way Abraham, Moses, Gideon, and Paul did, then I could do the same bold things that shifted the course of history forever.

Where I found myself on that desperate Monday morning was a serious test that would define the course of our family forever.

Check back next week for the continuation of Neil’s story in From Couch to Field: Hearing and Obeying…

Neil Broere

While living in Iraq in 2013, Neil and his wife Lindsey (and their 4 children) saw firsthand the wide open door for the Gospel in the Middle East. They are preparing to move back to Iraq to minister to Syrian refugees. Neil and his family are passionate to see the church in the Middle East restored, rebuilt, and replanted (Ezekiel 36). www.ironkiteinternational.com

Original article: www.frontiersusa.org/blog/article/from-couch-to-field-the-valley-of-decision