When Following God's Call Goes Wrong

Think back to when you first heard God's call. Remember the hope you held for all that could be.

When we found our family home seven years ago, there was just one thing we didn’t like. Our neighbours had a two-story house on the higher side of the hill and had a deck which looked out over our house, straight into the windows of our kitchen, dining and living rooms.

We decided we needed some privacy. There was already a head-height fence, and we’d need to go that height again to shield our windows from view. The best long-term solution was to plant trees.

So I went to the garden centre and found three suitable trees and positioned them along the fence-line. Every couple of months I’d measure their growth and celebrated every centimetre. Little by little, the best of my limited garden know-how, they grew. In a few more years they’d surpass the height of the fence and begin shielding our windows.

A few years into this tree-growing endeavour, before the trees were up to the height of the fence, I got talking with a friend at church who’d just started a yard-care business. Half to support him, half because I was going through a busy time, I hired him to mow my lawn.

When I got home the evening after his visit, the lawn looked beautiful. There was only one problem. The middle tree had gone! I went for a closer look and saw it had been the victim of a wayward whipper-snipper.

Years of investment and patient waiting - up in smoke.

There are times when we work hard towards something, only for an unexpected situation to derail our plans and leave us wondering what it was all for.

What about when our investment is in service to God and is into something we feel God has asked us to do?

We know we make mistakes, and we know accidents happen. These sorts of human disappointments can be very hard, but we might be able to understand how they could happen. We live in broken world.

But what about when God told us to do something and that doesn’t work out?

There was a man who had a vision of God. He saw God on his throne and angels surrounding him, singing praise. This vision of God’s holiness shook the man, as he became aware of his unworthiness to be in the presence of such a God. Yet, God forgave his sins and sent him with a message to declare to the people of his country. The man dedicated the rest of his life, approximately 60 years, telling the people and it’s leaders this message of a holy God who wanted people to turn to Him and trust Him to keep them safe from the surrounding nations that sought to destroy them.

Yet no matter how he pleaded, no matter the variety of ways he illustrated the message, people didn’t listen. They carried on in the way they wanted to live, ignoring the message of this prophet. God warned him the people would shut their eyes and ears and that is what happened.

What should he do… He could call it quits. He could try a different strategy. He could assume God was closing a door.

Have you ever felt like this? Have you ever felt God led you to do something but no results came?

A young man once reached out to me for help. He’d become a Christian in his early twenties but soon after, he’d encountered some problems in his life and drifted away. But now he had a family and knew he wanted to raise his children in God’s ways… but had to get his own life on track first. He had to start living a healthier lifestyle, find Christian community again and sort out his unresolved past. We met at a café outside a shopping centre on a cloudy afternoon. He shared his story for an hour. I began discipling him and over the next three years called him weekly, messaged him frequently and occasionally drove 25 minutes to visit. He had his ups and downs but I thought he would make progress. Yet after three years it seemed we’d got nowhere.

Should I move on?

I spoke with an older lady in her small apartment this week. She had helped many people over the years working as a pastor. She was generous with her time and money and God had used her to disciple many people. A few months ago she felt God tell her clearly to publish her discipleship material in a series of short books. She worked hard, formatting and editing. She paid for someone to design a cover. She got them printed. Then she paid for advertising. She promoted her books on social media. And waited. I sat opposite her on one of the two armchairs in her room, holding one of the books. She had hoped to donate any profits to overseas aid. Yet she had sold just one book. She’d been so sure God told her to publish the books. Years of experience, her life’s work, was represented in their pages.

Did she make a mistake?

Have you ever felt this way? Have you poured your soul into something and no one seemed to care?

I came across a passage in Isaiah recently that encouraged me.

It’s from Isaiah 49.

Listen to me, all you in distant lands!
Pay attention, you who are far away!
The Lord called me before my birth;
from within the womb he called me by name.

2

He made my words of judgment as sharp as a sword.
He has hidden me in the shadow of his hand.
I am like a sharp arrow in his quiver.

3

He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel,
and you will bring me glory.”

4

I replied, “But my work seems so useless!
I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose.
Yet I leave it all in the Lord’s hand;
I will trust God for my reward.”

5

And now the Lord speaks—
the one who formed me in my mother’s womb to be his servant,
who commissioned me to bring Israel back to him.
The Lord has honoured me,
and my God has given me strength.

6

He says, “You will do more than restore the people of Israel to me.
I will make you a light to the Gentiles,
and you will bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”

7

The Lord, the Redeemer
and Holy One of Israel,
says to the one who is despised and rejected by the nations,
to the one who is the servant of rulers:
“Kings will stand at attention when you pass by.
Princes will also bow low
because of the Lord, the faithful one,
the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

We read here of a servant, called by God to bring God glory. It says that God will use this servant with great purpose, like an arrow sent straight from a bow towards the bullseye.

Yet in verse four, this servant cries out: “My work seems so useless! I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose.

That resonates with me.

That’s the feeling I had when the tree I had cared for was carelessly cut down. It’s the feeling the prophet had when the people ignored him. It’s the feeling I had when the person I was investing in fell back into the same destructive patterns of behaviour. It’s the feeling of the woman who sensed God telling her to write a series of books only for no one to read them.

You may have a family member you’ve been praying for over many years. It might be friends you’ve been sharing your faith with and they don’t seem interested. You started a community initiative only to run into one roadblock after another. Maybe you’re leading a ministry that is beginning to feel flat. The call seems like a distant memory.

How are we to come to terms with these feelings? Did we only imagine it was God? Did we misunderstand? Or is it us? Did it fail because we weren’t good enough? Were we too fearful, not skilled enough, too prone to mistakes… not consistent enough?

What do we do when we find ourselves in this place, down the journey from those inspired beginnings, when no one seems to listen, people don’t change, our plans don’t succeed and our investments are cut down?

Do we give up? Do we move on? Or perhaps we persist, but with increasing frustration?

What does the servant of God do in the scripture we’ve just read?

Verse 4: I replied, “But my work seems so useless!
I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose.
Yet I leave it all in the Lord’s hand;
I will trust God for my reward.”

We might interpret the seeming inconsequence of our work as representing God's attitude gone cold towards us. We might try and carry on alone, believing God doesn’t care. This verse encourages us instead, to bring our feelings of wasted effort, our insecurities and our disappointments right to Him. To tell God what we feel. And leave it in His hands.

The good news is, if we’ll come to God, we can trust Him. His answer comes in the next verse.

How does God answer? First He affirms His servant. He has chosen us. His purpose hasn’t failed, it was there before we were born.

While we've interpreted the situation as things not working out. That maybe God’s purpose is faltering a bit…

God says his purpose is succeeding… and succeeding far beyond what the we expected. The servant looks around and sees a dismal failure. God says he is doing far more….

The prophet I told you about at the beginning. The one who no one listened to, was Isaiah. The author of the passage we’ve just read. Isaiah repeated God’s words for sixty years to a largely unresponsive audience. That’s what Isaiah saw.

God saw the same. But also far more. In verse six He says,

“You will do more than restore the people of Israel to me.
I will make you a light to the Gentiles.

In another translation: It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob…

Isaiah saw the people of Judah. God saw the nations of the world.

Over seven hundred years later, Isaiah is quoted by Jesus and the authors of the New Testament. The book that bears his name speaks to us still today. The words God gave him to say looked like they achieved nothing. Not the reality. They have been bringing God glory now for nearly 3000 years.

Isaiah saw failure. In God’s hands though, Isaiah was no failure. He was a carefully selected arrow, chosen for God’s eternal purpose.

_______

I had a call from the man I have been discipling on Tuesday this week. I expected to hear more of his ongoing struggles. Instead, he tells me he is going okay. He has started to exercise. He has been seeing a counsellor. His business isn’t consuming him and he is spending more time with his kids. He wants to reengage in a Bible Study. I start to consider maybe God is at work.

The lady who I visited and told me of her books that wouldn’t sell… I don’t know how that will turn out. Yet if God asked her to do it, I’m excited to wait and see.

What about the tree I planted but was cut down? Well, though on the surface it appeared the tree was finished, the roots weren’t harmed. It’s is now growing again and looking better than ever.

It reminds me of Isaiah 6 verse 13, which says,

But as a terebinth or oak tree leaves a stump when it is cut down,
so Israel’s stump will be a holy seed.”

This Holy Seed was Jesus.

And Jesus is the ultimate fulfilment of Isaiah 49. He is the true servant.

Consider the life of Jesus. He was the Messiah, the promised deliverer, the saviour, the great hope foretold by the scriptures! Surely, if anyone was to experience a life of success in service to God, it would be Jesus.

Yet, how did his thirty-three years on earth actually look at the time? He faithfully taught God’s Word but the majority of the people rejected what he taught. He performed many miracles, but the hearts of most remained unchanged. Even his close followers deserted him at the end when he was arrested. And it really did look finished as He hung on the cross. Even after his resurrection and the flame of hope flickered again, he left the world with only about five-hundred people affected enough to change their lives and follow him. That’s about 0.01% of the people of Israel - the people he was sent to redeem! Imagine if a church today was to state their goal was reaching 0.01% of their community! Success?

Isaiah 53 verse 3 says of Jesus:

He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

If you’re tired, deflated and you look at your efforts to be obedient to what God called you to and think it looks like a wasted effort… you’re in good company.

But just like Isaiah and Jesus, our obedience is anything but a waste.

Our obedience brings us in line with God’s eternal purposes. Think about it like this: the closer you understand and obey God, the greater the significance of everything you do. If we’re doing what God asks, we will succeed… just probably not in the way we understand success.

And so we shouldn’t give too much weight to how fruitful we appear to be. If the measure for Isaiah or for Jesus was what they achieved in their lifetime alone, they wouldn’t rate very highly! The elite of the day certainly overlooked both of them.

This is the way God chooses to work in the world.

1 Corinthians 1:24-25 says, But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.

Our work for God may not appear to bring God much glory. When we feel weak and our work looks fruitless, the temptation is there to depart from what we feel God has called us to do, in order to chase something that promises greater success. But no, we must keep looking to God’s foolish sounding plans.

You see, hardships and struggles and feeling we are failing in God’s calling may not be a sign that we have misheard God’s call. It may be, that we have heard it perfectly. That we are walking in the footsteps of Jesus.

We must trust God for future fruit in His good purposes and timing. Our ultimate goal is not fruit, this is in God’s hands and a by-product, our goal is to be obedient servants, approved by God.

Ironically, when we are driven by how successful an endeavour appears, we may miss out on God’s best because we give up too early. Or we may take a road that brings quick success but no lasting fruit. If instead, we commit to the cause God has called us to, we can be sure that it will bring great glory to God and fruitfulness for His kingdom. Not because we made it happen, but because we aligned ourselves with His great plans.

We’ve been reading Tolkien’s The Hobbit as a family and we finished it on Thursday. This line on the last page summarises the idea of aligning ourselves with God’s purposes well.

Bilbo says, “Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to

be true…!”

"Of course!" said Gandalf. "And why should not they prove true? Surely you don't disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!"

We may be little people in a wide world, but we are invited to participate in bringing about prophecies of old.

We shouldn’t miss God’s plan because it looks like we’re making no difference at all. We must focus on being true to what God has said, not our own preconceived ideas about how it should all pan out.

A line in a book called ‘A Praying Life’ by Paul Miller stood out to me:

“Sometimes we know we’re in the middle of a story God is writing because it looks like a mistake.”

That’s the way I’ve found it. It doesn’t sound right to us… but that’s the life of faith. We are God’s servants, it’s not the other way around. All we should endeavour to do is follow the example of Jesus and simply say yes to God, no matter how unproductive doing so seems.

For if the stories above show us anything, it is that in God’s hands, failure precedes real success, dryness comes before the harvest, and passing through death brings life… even if we don’t always see it. Continuing to trust God and remaining faithful to His call through apparently unfruitful years will bring great glory to God. In His hands, our too small a thing becomes, He will do more. More even, than the biggest dreams we had in our minds when we first heard His call.

Questions to ponder:

1. When have you felt your service to God may have been wasted effort?

2. Have you given up on something too soon because it didn’t go the way you thought?

3. In light of today’s message, is there something you want to get back to, start or keep going with?

If you're interested in reading the complete answer to this question, my book Dreams Mended, an unexpected journey to dreaming big again, was written for you.