39. How Do I Know What God Wants Me to Do? When Calling Is Clear But the Path Is Not

You are not waiting for God to speak. You are waiting for God to be clearer. And if you have been treating those as the same problem, it may be the reason you have been standing still longer than you needed to. You have a sense of the direction. The calling is real. But the path is obscured and you have been telling yourself you cannot move responsibly until you can see further than you currently can.

This episode closes The Calling Arc with the most practical question of the three: what do you actually do when you cannot see the assignment clearly? Drawing from the burning bush conversation between God and Moses, Peter walking on water, Abraham leaving Ur not knowing where he was going, and Peter being restored by the charcoal fire,  this episode makes the case that the fog is not a stop sign. It is the condition in which faith is formed.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The difference between genuine confusion and fear wearing the costume of confusion — and why one requires more information and the other requires obedience
• The two wrong responses to fog: paralysis and presumption — and what Moses and Peter reveal about both
• Why Moses's five objections at the burning bush were never really a clarity problem — they were a fear problem
• What the Greek word distazō reveals about why Peter sank on the water
• Hebrews 11:8 — Abraham went out not knowing where he was going — and why the not knowing was the condition of the obedience, not a problem he overcame first
• Why Psalm 119:105 describes a lamp to your feet, not a floodlight to your future
• Isaiah 30:21, Exodus 13:21, and 2 Corinthians 5:7 — three passages that reveal God's pattern of guidance as cloud-following, not map-reading
• What obedience before clarity produces that clarity before obedience never can
• A direct pastoral word for the person who took a step and it went sideways
• The charcoal fire of John 21 — and what Jesus said to Peter in the exact atmosphere of his worst failure

Key Scripture references: Hebrews 11:8, Psalm 119:105, Proverbs 3:5-6, Exodus 3-4, Matthew 14:28-31, John 21:9-19, Isaiah 30:21, Exodus 13:21, 2 Corinthians 5:7, Genesis 12:7

Perfect for: Christians who know their calling but cannot see the next step, believers paralyzed by fog who are waiting for certainty that isn't coming, people who took a step in faith and it went wrong, anyone asking how to know what God wants them to do, men and women ready to move but afraid to move without full clarity.

Part of our series: The Calling Arc — Part 3 of The Formation Trilogy (Episodes 34-42) Conclusion of: Episode 37 "How Do I Know My Calling?" and Episode 38 "What Is God Doing While I Wait?" Next episode — Episode 40: "Write It Down: What Habakkuk 2 Says About Vision"

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Email us any questions or comments to yourpursuitpodcast@gmail.com

Order your copy of my latest book, "The Purpose in the Pause", here

Learn more about me at www.justindbelt.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're not waiting for God to speak. You're waiting for God to be clearer. See, there is a significant difference between those two things. And if you've been treating them as the same problem, it may be the reason you've been standing still longer than you needed to. You have a sense of the direction. Maybe it is strong. Maybe it's more like a lean, a consistent pull towards something that keeps reasserting itself no matter how many times you try to set it aside. You have prayed over it. You've sat with it. You've tested it against scripture and submitted it to people who know you. And still, the specifics are not clear. The path isn't lit. You can see the next step, maybe, but not the one that comes after that. And you have been telling yourself that you cannot move responsibly until you can see further than you currently can. I want to tell you something today. The fog is not a stop sign, the fog is a condition. And faithful movement in the fog produces something that waiting for the fog to lift never will. Welcome back to Faith Formed. I'm your host, Justin Belt. This is episode 39, and the final episode of the Calling Arc. We started in episode 37 by establishing how calling actually works. It's not an event that you're waiting for, but an identity that you already have that was established before you were even born. Last week in episode 38, we went into the waiting room, the season between the call and the commission, and asked what God is actually doing while you wait. No, he's not twiddling his thumbs. He is intimately involved while you are in the waiting room. And today we're going to close the arc. And I think for me, this is going to be probably the most personal episode of this arc so far. We're going to close it with the most practical question of these three episodes. What do you do when you cannot see the assignment clearly? Not when you don't know your calling. Not when you're in the long waiting room with no sense of direction at all. But what do you but when you know the calling, right? Um when you've done the waiting and you're ready to move and the path in front of you is still obscured, what then? That is where we're going today. But before we get there, if you've been enjoying this arc, even the one before it, the purpose arc, uh, I would love it if you would just take a few moments and leave us a five-star rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts. And do me a favor, share this episode with somebody that you love. It helps us to be discovered, and it helps us with our faithful mission of doing what God has called us to do, which is to present honest faith for people who don't have it all together. Now, before we talk about what to do in the fog, I need to name something that the fog almost always produces. Okay? And again, this is probably the most personal episode of this arc. And so what I am giving you all right now in this episode, I'm also giving it to myself because I need every ounce of this, uh, just as much, or maybe even more, than some of you who are listening needed. So here's what the fog produces it produces a convincing impersonation of confusion. And here's what I mean. There are two very different experiences that feel almost identical from the inside. One is a genuine lack of clarity, as in, you honestly do not know what direction to move. The signals are mixed, the wise people in your life are giving you different counsel, and you need more information before you can proceed responsibly. The other is fear that is wearing the costume of confusion. This is where you know the direction, right? In your quieter moments, in the places where you are most honest with yourself, you know, but the direction is frightening. The scale of it is bigger than you feel ready for. The cost of it is real, and you have and you've counted it. You've counted that cost. And so your mind begins to generate confusion as a protective mechanism because confusion gives you a socially acceptable reason to stay still that fear cannot provide for us. This distinction matters enormously, because the response to genuine confusion is more information, more counsel, more prayer, more time, right? But the response to fear dressed as confusion is not more information, it's obedience. And if you treat fear as if it were confusion, if you keep gathering information and seeking counsel and waiting for more clarity when what you actually need to do is move, you will stay in the fog indefinitely. Because the fog that fear produces doesn't lift through more discernment. It only lifts through taking the first step. Os Guinness, in the call, I've referenced this a lot. He argues that most of what people call waiting for guidance is actually something closer to what he describes as the paralysis of perfectionism, the need for complete certainty before acting, which the life of faith almost never provides and was never designed to provide. He writes that calling is not a matter of having the whole map before you take the first step. It's a matter of knowing the next step and just taking it. So the first thing to do when you cannot see the assignment clearly is to ask yourself an honest question. Is this confusion or is this fear? And then once you have your answer, sit with that answer long enough that you cannot talk yourself out of it. Because yourself will definitely try to talk you out of it. That's just what the self does. Now, there are two ways people typically respond to uh or when the path is not clear. Okay? And both of them are wrong. The first way is paralysis. Paralysis says, I cannot move until I can see. And it has a kind of responsible, cautious, spiritually mature sound to it, right? I'm waiting on clarity. I'm waiting on the Lord. Have you ever heard that before? Of course you have. You do not want to presume on God. You don't want to run ahead of his timing. Because you've seen what happens when people move too fast and you have no interest in making that mistake, right? Right, of course. It's totally logical. And so you wait and wait and wait. And the waiting gradually stops feeling like trust and starts feeling like drift. You're not actively waiting on the posture of prayer, or you're not waiting in the posture of prayer or preparation and faithful presence. You've just stopped. The waiting room has become a residence instead of a transit point. And you have mistaken your stopping for godly patience. The second wrong response is presumption. And here's what presumption says: I know the general direction, so I'm going to move with confidence and assume that God will honor my initiative. It baptizes decisiveness as faith. It mistakes momentum for leading. And it tends to produce people who are moving very fast in a direction that has more to do with them, their ambition, their anxiety, than with genuine discernment. Now, the difference between these two, I think, we see them in the lives of Moses and Peter. And I want to talk about these a little bit longer than most sermons you might have heard about them, because I think when we move past them too quickly, we miss what they're actually saying to us. So let's start with Moses first. All right. So we're in Exodus 3 and 4. And what we see here is one of the most uh one of the longer calling revelations that we see in Scripture. So we know God speaks to Moses from the burning bush. The bush burns, but it's not consumed, right? And God announces something that is really staggering: that he's going to use this man, Moses, who by now is 80 years old, who has been sitting for 40 years on the backside of the desert as a shepherd to deliver an entire nation from the ironclad grip of the strongest empire on the face of the earth at the time. And Moses does what many of us will probably do. He immediately begins to ask questions. Question number one Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh? Now, that sounds like humility, right? Who am I, God? Right? That I should go to? Who am I? But read it again. See, it's not primarily a question about his resume. I believe Moses knows that he's skilled, but it's a question about his worthiness. Remember, Moses fled Egypt because he murdered someone. And see, Moses is not asking God for information. He's asking God to reconsider. Maybe I'm not the right man for the God and for the job God. And God answers him and says, I will be with you. That's the answer. It wasn't a credential, it wasn't a qualification, it was a promise of presence. Remember, last week, Jeremiah, when God said to him, I've made you a prophet, Jeremiah says, But God, I'm too young. And God didn't give him qualifications why he chose him. He just says, I will be with you. And God says the same thing to Moses. He doesn't, he doesn't address Moses' question. He simply says, I will be with you. But Moses wasn't done. Question number two. Okay, God, suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, What is his name? Then what should I tell them? Now, this is reasonable. Yeah? I think it is definitely. I mean, the last time they saw him, he was running because he killed somebody. And so God answers that question. He says, I am who I am. I am who I am. Tell them, I am sent you. But Moses is still not done. Number three, pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue. That's Exodus 410. And God answers even this Who gave human beings their mouths? Was it not I? I will help you speak, I will teach you what to say. But then comes the moment that I think reveals the heart behind all of these questions. Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send somebody else. Boom. There it is. After every question was answered, after every objection was addressed, after every sign was provided, please send someone else. What I want you to see is this. Moses' problem was not that he lacked information. By the time he arrived at Exodus 4.13, he had more information than almost any called person in Scripture. God had answered every question. He had provided confirmation after confirmation. And Moses still said no. Because it was never really a clarity problem. It was a fear problem. The information he was asking for was real, right? The questions were real. But they weren't, but they were serving fear, not discernment. They were giving him language for a refusal that he had already decided on. Right? And God's response to Exodus 4.3 is one moment in the burning bush where we see something like divine anger. I'm sorry, Exodus 4.13. Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses. But see, God is not angry because Moses asked too many questions. God is angry because Moses used the questions to avoid an obedience that all the answers in the world had not been enough to produce. God was angry because Moses had already decided in his heart that he was going to refuse. There comes a moment, and I want to say this as carefully and pastorally as I know how. See, Moses needed to go, and he had everything that he needed to go, but he still said, God, send someone else. I've said it. Maybe not out loud. But in my heart, on quiet moments, on mornings or moments and quiet moments where the calling was clear and the cost was visible, and I found one more question to ask before I could commit to moving. And if you're honest, you probably have too. Now let's look at Peter. This is Matthew 14, 22 through 23. We know this well. The disciples are in a boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee. It's the fourth watch of the night, so it's between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. The dawn was coming. They were tired, man. They had been rowing against the wind. So they were exhausted and afraid. And Jesus comes to them walking on water in true Jesus fashion. Jesus like, I'm here, guys. They're like, wait, what? And their first response is terror. They think he's a ghost, and Jesus says, It is I. Don't be afraid. Take courage. And then Peter does something that I think deserves more attention than it usually gets. He doesn't just jump out of the boat. He asks, Lord, if it's you, tell me to come to you on the water. Now that's not presumption. That's really discernment. He was discerning. He was testing the word. He wasn't just relying on his feelings. He wasn't just relying on his own initiative. He's asking for an explicit invitation before he steps out. And Jesus gives it to him. He says, Come in Matthew 14, 29. One word is all Peter needed, and he was gone. He stepped out of the boat and he walked on water, which is incredible. He did it. And I think we gloss over that fact because of what comes next. But we need to stop and give Peter some credit because he did what 99% of us would not do. He did the impossible because he obeyed a word. But then the wind shifted. When he heard the wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink, cried out, Lord, save me. See, what sank Peter was not insufficient faith. It was misdirected attention. He stopped looking at the one who had spoken and started looking at the conditions around the word. Oh man, that's good. I feel like having a Pastor Mike Jr. moment. Michael Justin. Keep your eyes on the one who spoke and quit looking at the conditions around the word. Come on, that's good. I know that's good. That's speaking to me right now. Because the conditions around the word were real. Yo, the wind was real. The choppy waves were real. He wasn't imagining any of this. The distance between him and the boat were real. But the conditions were not the word. And it was the word that was holding him up. Here's what I want you to feel in this. Peter didn't sink because he moved. He sank because he stopped trusting the word that authorized the movement. Oh, that's good. And what Jesus said to him as he reached out his hand and caught him is worth examining. You of little faith, why did you doubt? See, the Greek word for doubt here is dystaso, and this next part is good. You may want to write it down. Dystaso means to stand in two places at once, to be divided, to have your attention split between two different realities. Peter was standing between the word of Jesus and the evidence of the wind. And you cannot stand in two places at once on water. You sink. What both Moses and Peter needed, and what most of us need in the fog, is not more clarity about the conditions. It is a fixed, undivided attention on the one whose word is more reliable than the conditions. Moses needed to stop asking questions and walk toward Pharaoh, trusting the I am who sent him. Peter needed to keep his eyes on Jesus and let the word hold him rather than him looking at what the word was asking him to walk through. And the same is true for you. The same is true for me. The fog around the calling is real. The conditions are real. The wind is genuinely alarming. Yes, it is. I know it. But the word is more real than the wind. Listen to me. Let me say it again. The word is more real than the wind. And the word is what you were asked to walk on. I want to spend some real time in Hebrews 11 because I think it contains one of the most important and overlooked sentences in the entire New Testament conversation about calling and obedience. We know Hebrews 11, we call it the, you know, the faith hall of fame and all the cutesy things, but let's look at Hebrews 11, verse 8. It says, by faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. I want to zoom in on the part that says, not knowing where he was going. The writer of Hebrews does not present this as a problem that Abraham overcame before he moved. Rather, he presents it as the condition in which Abraham moved. You see the difference? The not knowing was not resolved before the obedience. The not knowing was the context for the obedience. What Abraham had was not MapQuest or Google Maps or, you know, he didn't have a detailed itinerary. He just had a word. Leave your country and your kindred and your father's house and go to the land I will show you. Go to the land I will show you, not the land I am showing you. Man, gosh, this is getting on me so bad. The land I will show you. The showing was future tense. It was contingent upon the going. And he would not see where he was going until he was already on the way. And Hebrews calls this faith, not recklessness, not presumption, faith, the conviction of things not seen, the certainty about things hoped for, the willingness to move on the basis of a word from God before the evidence of that word is fully visible. Hebrews 119 105 says, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light into my path. A lamp to my feet, not a floodlight to my future. A lamp lights the step that you're currently taking, right? And the immediate ground in front of you. It doesn't illuminate the whole road ahead. It gives you just enough to take the next step. And when you take it, the lamp moves with you, and the next step becomes visible. See, the expectation of full illumination before movement is not a biblical expectation. And I don't know where we get it from. I don't know why it's being taught. But it's not a biblical expectation. It's a contemporary one. We live in a world that has more information available than at any point in any generation in history. And we have developed an almost pathological dependence on having complete information before having a decision. We research, right? We gather data, we consult, we analyze, and then we wait for certainty that was never going to come in the form we were waiting for. The lamp gives you the next step. Take it. But that begs another question. What does it actually look like to move faithfully when you cannot see the full path? I want to be specific here rather than inspirational, because we don't need more inspiration, right? Because this is where most teaching about fog and faith stays too abstract to be useful, in my opinion. See, the first thing it looks like, sorry, the first thing that it looks like is moving in the direction of your last clear word. See, most people in the fog are waiting for a new word, but God's guidance is usually cumulative rather than episodic. He does not typically give you a fresh set of instructions every time you feel unclear. He gives you a direction and he expects you to keep moving in that direction until he gives you a specific reason to change course. The absence of a new word is not an invitation to stop. It is an invitation to keep going in the direction of the last clear word. So, what was the last thing that God clearly said to you about the assignment? Not about your general spiritual life, but about the specific calling that He's placed on your life. Whatever that was, move toward it. Not in presumption, but in an humble, faithful, one step at a time posture of someone who trusts the shepherd even when they can't see the whole pasture. Someone who rests in knowing that the shepherd sees the whole pasture. The second thing that it looks like is taking the smallest faithful step that you can identify. Not the full vision, not the complete assignment, the smallest, most immediate, most concrete expression of the calling that you can act on right now. If you sense a calling toward teaching, you teach one person this week. Not a course, not a platform, just one person. If you sense a calling toward writing, you write one page, not the book, one page. If you sense a calling toward leadership, lead one conversation with more intentionality than intentionality than you normally would. You feel me? See, the fog does not lift before the movement, it lifts as you move. Howard Thurman, who was writing about the experience of people who had to act on incomplete information in the face of real and present risk, argued that there is a specific kind of courage that is required for this kind of faithful action. He called it the courage to act on what you know in the face of what you don't know. I'm not talking about being reckless, okay? Not the pretense that the unknown doesn't exist. We're not pretending the unknown does exist, but it's the decision to let the known be sufficient for the next step, even when the unknown is significant. And yes, the unknown is significant. But you have to have the courage to take the next known step. But then the third thing, faithful movement in the fog looks like, is staying in conversation with God as you move. Abraham went out not knowing where he was going. But he did not go out alone. And the narrative of his life in Genesis is not the story of a man who received a word and then went silent while he executed the plan. It is the story of an ongoing, responsive, sometimes argumentative relationship with the God who kept speaking as long as Abraham kept moving. The fog is not a place where God stops talking. It's often a place where he speaks differently, less in dramatic declarations and more in subtle confirmations, subtle nudges, the door that opens, the person who appears, the circumstance that makes the next step suddenly obvious in a way it wasn't obvious before. But you only experience those confirmations if you are moving. They're not delivered to people who are standing still, waiting for the fog to lift. The fourth thing, and this might be the most important one, is giving yourself permission to course correct without calling the whole direction wrong. Oswald Chambers wrote this: God does not give us overcoming life. See, the obedience is not the arrival, it's the process. And in the process, you will sometimes take a step that turns out to be not the right one. And you'll need to adjust, and that's okay. That readjustment is not, you know, evidence that the calling is wrong. No. But that's what navigating the fog faithfully looks like. Sometimes you'll go right when God wants you to go left. It happens, man. It happens. And we have to learn to give ourselves the grace in order to course correct without thinking that we're a failure, that we have failed, that we're not supposed to do anything, and then lull ourselves into paralysis. And I need to stop here and speak directly to a specific person because I know you're listening. You always are. I'm speaking to the person who did move, who took the step that they believed was faithful, who moved in direction of the calling with as much discernment and prayer and counsel as they could bring to it, and it went sideways. And I'm saying that to you as the as that person. It didn't go slightly off, of course, it went sideways. The step that was supposed to open the door, in fact, it closed it. The decision that was supposed to advance the calling set it back. The relationship or the organization or the opportunity that was supposed to be the context for the assignment turned out to be something other than what you believed it to be. So now you just stand here in the fog. You're in the fog with the wound from the last time you moved in it. And the question you're carrying is not just how do I move when I can't see it clearly. It is how do I ever trust my own discernment again? And that's a real question. And it deserves a real answer. I think John 21 gives us one. After the resurrection, Jesus appears to his disciples by the Sea of Tiberias. Peter had denied him three times. And the last time Peter was positioned around the charcoal fire, he denied knowing Jesus at all. And now in John 21, 9, the disciples come to the shore and find that Jesus has prepared a charcoal fire with fish and bread. John includes that detail, the charcoal fire. Go back and read it. And I don't think that it was accidental. It's the same smell, right? It's the same setting. And I'm sure that in Peter's mind, he he he smells that charcoal and he goes right back to when he says three times that he didn't know Jesus. And Jesus is meeting Peter in the exact atmosphere of his worst failure. And three times Jesus asks Peter, Do you love me, Peter? Three questions. Three failures that were covered in those questions. Three times Peter says, Yes, and three times Jesus says, Then feed my sheep, tend my lambs, follow me. He doesn't give Peter a detailed plan or a map for how this ministry would unfold. He doesn't explain how the step that went wrong fits into the larger story. He doesn't offer a theological framework for processing the failure. He simply says, Peter, follow me, brother. Not follow me when you understand what it looks like, not follow me when you understand what happens, not follow me once your confidence is back. Not it's just it's just follow me, right? In the middle of the charcoal smell and the unresolved grief and the unanswered questions, follow me. And that's what faithfulness looks like after a step that went sideways. It's not a rebuilt confidence in your own discernment, it is a rebuilt willingness to follow the one whose discernment you can trust when yours has failed. Now I want to close this teaching with something that I think is the most important truth in this whole episode. And I want to give it the time it deserves because I think a lot of people, including yours truly, need to hear this more than once before it actually sticks. Obedience before clarity produces something that clarity before obedience never can. Let me say that again because I think this needs to land because this statement has gravity, and I need you to feel it. Obedience before clarity produces something that clarity before obedience never can. See, when you wait for full clarity before you move, you may eventually arrive at a decision. But you arrive as the same person who was standing in the fog. The waiting didn't form you, it just passed. You have not grown in trust. You've not developed the particular kind of intimacy with God that comes from needing him for the next step in a way you do not need him when you can see the whole road. You've simply accumulated more information and eventually acted on it. But see, when you move in obedience before the fog has lifted, when you take the step before, you know, when you take the step on the basis of the word, before the conditions confirm the word, the movement forms you in ways that waiting can never. Let me show you this in scripture because I think that this is more pervasive in biblical narrative than we think. Genesis 12, God calls Abram. We already talked about Hebrews 11:8. He went out not knowing where he's going, but I want you to see what happens next in the narrative. In Genesis 12, 7, after Abram has arrived in Canaan, after he has taken the step in the fog, the Lord appears to him and says, To your offspring, I will give this land. The promise was not given before the movement. It was given after, after Abram obeyed, after he was already in the land. The word that would have been the most comforting before he left Ur. This specific land, your descendants, a nation, came on the other side of the obedience. And see, God didn't withhold that word before Abram moved because he was being capricious. No. He withheld it because the person who could receive it had to be formed by the journey first. A man sitting in Ur had no frame to hold that promise. A man who had walked out of everything he knew in response to a word had developed the kind of trust that could receive that promise. The obedience before clarity is what produced the capacity to hold the clarity when it came. Isaiah 30, 21 says, whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, This is the way. Walk in it. I want you to notice where the voice is. It's behind you, not in front, not above you, illuminating what is ahead. It's behind you, speaking into the movement you're already making. The guidance comes as you walk, not before you walk. The voice says, This is the way you are. Sorry, the voice says, This is the way as you are in the middle of walking it, confirming the direction that you're already taking, rather than announcing it before you take it. And this is consistent with how God guided Israel in the wilderness. By day the Lord went went went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud. By night a pillar of fire, right? A pillar of cloud ahead of them, but a pillar of cloud is not a detailed map. You can't read a cloud unless there's a spiritual gift that I just have no knowledge of, right? You cannot read a cloud. You cannot extract from a cloud the specifics of where you're going or how long it'll take you to get there or what the terrain will look like as you're going. You simply follow it. You keep your eyes on it. And when it moves, you move, just like that. And when it stops, you stop, just like that. I couldn't resist, sorry. But the guidance was real. It was just, it just, it wasn't the kind of guidance that removed the need for trust. And this is where I think most of us have a theology of guidance that is simply not biblical. See, we've been taught either implicitly or explicitly that God's guidance looks like a clear map. That if we pray enough, fast enough, listen carefully enough, worship enough, and are spiritually mature enough, the fog will lift and the angel will come and the path will become plain, and we will move forward with confidence because we can see where we're going. But the biblical pattern from Abram to Moses to Israel in the wilderness, to Peter on the water, to Paul in Acts, the biblical pattern is almost universally cloud following. It's pillar tracking, it's lamplit walking one step at a time on a path that does not reveal itself in advance. And the people who developed the deepest truth, the deepest trust in God were the ones who never had a complete, clear view of the path. They were the people who followed the most faithfully when the path was the least visible. Now let me say something pastoral here because I think this is where guilt lives for a lot of people. If you've been waiting for full clarity before you move, and you have read and you you're this far in the episode, you may be feeling like you've you may be feeling condemnation, like you've been doing it wrong, like the fact that you haven't moved yet is evidence of insufficient faith or or disobedience or spiritual immaturity. And I want to be careful here because there is a difference between a person who has been faithfully waiting in genuine discernment and a person who has been using the appearance of waiting as a sophisticated form of avoidance. Only you and God know which one you are. But here is what I know about both of them: the person who has been genuinely waiting faithfully in prayer and preparation and forward positioning, that person is not behind. They're exactly where formation requires them to be. That is waiting that has been doing something. Because in that place, in that space, there is a grace underneath all of this. Romans 8.1 says, Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who were in Christ Jesus. No condemnation. Not for the ones who move too slowly, not for the ones who said, send someone else, not for the ones who sank in the water because they looked at the wind, not for the ones who denied Jesus three times around the charcoal fire. No condemnation, only invitation. Follow me. Barbara Brown Taylor writes about this. She says, uh, she calls this the gift of darkness, the specific grace that comes not from having the path illuminated, but from learning to trust the one who knows the path in the dark. She argues that some of the most important things God does in a person, the things that cannot be produced by information or strategy or even correct theology, happen specifically in the conditions where we cannot see. The cloud was how God showed up, not in spite of the obscurity, but in the obscurity. And when you finally move in the fog, when you take the step on the basis of the word alone, what gets produced in you is not just forward progress. It's a faith that has been tested in the dark and found sufficient. It's a trust that is not dependent on visibility. It's an intimacy with God that only comes from needing Him in the way that fog requires. Proverbs 3, 5-6 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not onto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Not before you walk in them, but as you walk in them. The straightening happens in the walking. That is what obedience before clarity produces. And it's worth the fog. Now, I want to be honest with you about something that I think most people in my position would not stay, would not say. I am in the fog right now. Not metaphorically, not as a rhetorical device to help you feel like I understand what you're going through, but I am genuinely in it. I have written about waiting. I wrote a whole book about the purpose and the pause, about how God is working in you and around you and protecting you from premature elevation while the door stays shut. And I believe every word of it. I preached through an entire arc about how the waiting room is not empty space, but the most intentional formation work God does. I've sat in these scriptures, y'all. I have done the theology, I have built the framework, and I do not have full clarity about what comes next for me. The church I planted closed. The next assignment is not visible in the way that I expected it to be right now. I know my calling. I know what I am. The primary calling is not in question. But the specific step to get there, the expression, the next assignment, the door that's supposed to open, it's still obscured in ways that are frustrating, if I'm honest about it. And here's the thing that I think I need to say from inside this fog rather than from the other side of it. Most content like this is created from the other side. It's from a person who's walked through it and can and sees it clearly, right? And that's valuable. I've learned from people who've done that, but I'm not doing that today. I'm not describing a fog that I came through. I'm speaking to you from inside the fog that I am currently in. And what I want you to hear from me is not a polished testimony about how it all worked out. I want you to hear this. The fog doesn't mean the word was wrong. We planted the church, it didn't work out. That doesn't mean that what we did was wrong. The fog doesn't mean that God has moved on. The call is still there. Y'all, if you had any idea how deep the calling in me is still to build, ugh. I feel it strongly every day. The fog doesn't mean you missed your moment or disqualified yourself or took the wrong step. The fog means you are in the condition where faith is required, and faith is only required when you can't see. Y'all, I spent years waiting for clarity about planting a church. That clarity eventually came. I stepped out in obedience. The church lasted nine months, and then it closed, and now I'm in a new fog. Not in the same one. And this is a harder one in some ways. Because this one comes with the memory of the last time I moved and what happened. This fog has a charcoal smell to it. And I'm learning in real time, slowly, what it means to hear Jesus say, follow me, in the middle of unresolved grief and the unanswered questions about the specific ache of a calling that is still intact, but whose next expression I cannot yet see. And I'm learning that the lamp lights the step I am currently standing on, not the road ahead. And I'm learning that that's enough. Not because it feels like enough, but because the word is more reliable than a feeling. And I want to say something to you also that I'm also saying to myself right now as I record this. And if you've made it this far in the episode, I believe it is because something in this conversation is speaking to you in something real right now. And I want you to know that you're not alone right now. I'm not speaking as a guide from the top of the mountain. I'm speaking as a person that's walking beside you, walking through the same obscurity that you're walking in. And what I know from inside it is that the calling is still intact. The word is still more reliable than the conditions. The next step is available even when the one after it is not. And the God who said, I am with you to a terrified young man in Anathoth before he ever stood in front of a king. That same God is with you now in the fog you were standing in. His presence does not require your clarity. It only requires your yes. So will you say yes to him? So here's where we land at the end of the calling arc. Episode 37, calling is not an event, it's an identity that you already have. Episode 38, the waiting room is not empty space between the real moments. It's the most intentional formation that God does in us. You're not stuck, you're stationed. In episode 39, the fog is not a stop sign. The lamp lights the step you are on, not the road ahead. And obedience before clarity produces something that waiting for clarity before obedience never can. The question that closes this arc is not, do you have enough clarity to move? The question is, do you have enough trust to take the next step with the clarity that you already have, no matter how small? Because you have more than you think you do. And the next step is closer than the fog is making it appear. Take it. Father, I want to come to you on behalf of everyone who just listened to this episode, everyone who's listened to this ark, for the one who's been treating fear as if it were confusion. God, I ask you to clearly name it in their spirit. Give them the honesty to know the difference, and give them the courage to respond to what they already know rather than hiding behind what they don't. For the one who's paralyzed in the fog, who's mistaken their stopping for godly patience when it is actually drift, Lord, I ask for the gift of a single clear next step. Not the whole map, got just one step, and the willingness to take it before the road beyond that step is visible. For the one who moved and it went sideways, Father, meet them the way you met Peter by the charcoal fire, in the exact atmosphere of the failure, not with an explanation, but with a question. Do you love me? And let that question be enough to move again. And lastly, for the one who is about to take their first step in a very long time, the one who has been standing still far longer than they intended and is finally tentatively ready to move. Father God, I ask you to confirm that step as they take it. Not before, as they take it. Let the lamp move with them. Let the next step become visible and let the movement form something in them that the waiting could not. You are the God who goes before us, who walks beside us, who calls us by name into darkness we cannot fully see. Lead us in Jesus' name. Amen. Before you go, if this arc is named something real across these three episodes, share it. All three episodes. Send it to someone who is standing still when they're ready to move. Take 60 seconds and leave a rating and a review wherever you listen. We we I could use them. I really could. Every review is how this podcast finds the people who need it. And I know they do. Also, subscribe now so you don't miss what's coming next. It's gonna be good. It's gonna be good. If you enjoyed the purpose arc, if you've enjoyed the calling arc, next week we start the vision arc. And it's gonna be good. Oh my gosh, it's gonna be good. I can't wait. Follow Faith Formed on social media, it's all in the show notes. I'm Justin Belt, your host. This has been Faith Formed. Keep being faithful, keep pursuing, and y'all be blessed. See you next time.