The Answer

I truly believe, the closer we get to God the easier it becomes to hear from Him. Now, I have never heard an audible voice but if this story is not a direct message from God, I don't know what is. 

Since I have decided to go to Uganda, I have been struggling with how to pay for it.  There are so many things I could use that money for, like a new(er) car (because mine is on its last leg). I hear everyone talk about taking that leap of faith and letting God being in control but was I ready? I really don’t like not having control over my life.  I know I need to save money but what sacrifices am I willing to take? After going through my budget, I determined that there were 2 areas that I needed to control my spending - eating out and pool (which includes eating dinner out the nights I play).  Currently I play on 3 pool teams. One is only once a month and we are middle way through the session so I can't quit that one so that leaves my Monday & Tuesday night teams.  I really enjoy both but if I had to choose, I would stay on the Tuesday night team.  I really didn't want to quit my Monday night team since that was the first team I joined and it is only $10 a week and that is only if I play. 

 I took an idea I got from my friend Matt. I would pray but not just ask for guidance, ask for a specific sign to give me my answer. I will have to admit that I did forget the part where I ask for it to occur on a specific day at first but then I kind of quickly added it so when it didn’t occur that 1st Sunday, I wasn’t too surprised. I prayed that if I should quit that one team for this session in order to save money, I wanted to have a have a specific song played at the service at Journey.  I didn’t ask for a common song that is played frequently but rather one that I loved and had not heard in many months. Well that song wasn’t played last week so I thought that maybe the answer was no.  And since I forgot to ask for that specific week since it was almost an after thought, I had almost settled on staying on the team. Then I started thinking about it some more, if we won the tournament to go Vegas, I would have to stay on the team to be eligible to go.  I wouldn’t know if that would happen until this past Saturday.  I told one of my friends that I was thinking about sitting out this session to save money for my trip but that would al depend on if we went to Vegas.  Saturday rolls around and we lose our shot at going to Vegas.  Now I am back to the same dilemma of what to do.  I kept going back and forth of what to do.  Maybe I would stay on the team but ask not to play but the minimum 6 matches even though that would not be fair to the other teammates.  

Sunday morning comes and I still can’t decide.  I sat in the service and I kept thinking that surely the song that I wanted to hear would not fit in with this week’s sermon but what did I know.  As the band began to play I tried my best not to cry but by the time the song, the song I asked God to hear, was finished there were tears. Even though the answer did not come that first Sunday, I do believe that song was still my answer from God. And that song, my answer from God, is King on His Way. 

I have my answer, now what do I do? It’s not going to be easy to tell them that I can’t play and I am sure they will try to change my mind.  They are like my family and I hate to say no to them but I would rather say no to them than to God.

As if this was all was not enough to convince me that I needed to make the decision to quit, right before I started writing, I logged on to Twitter and saw this tweet:

Prayer is useless if there is no action-once you know what to do.