The following was submitted by Tom Schuck near the end of the 40 Days of Prayer and Fasting.
On October 4, the prayer was "Lord may I follow your commands even if they seem crazy". After many years of following the Lord, I have come to accept that His commands, that is the "ENDS," have always been undeniably the best for me and for my family. So much so, that now, whenever He says go, I am pretty much completely resigned to complete obedience.
I did make it clear that His ENDS are never crazy, but His process, the MEANS, often have have my head spinning. Even though I will obey with complete obedience, because I know the outcome will be perfect, I often find myself thinking "this is crazy" when it comes to the process that I am going through.
Did I really need to experience THAT? Do I really need to be experiencing this now? Is this experience forever, for a very long time, for a season, or until You have manipulated all the circumstances for me to walk into the next phase?
I am surprised how often God did tell people the exact future, and indeed He has revealed some startling aspects of our exact future. But we, like they, want more than knowing what is going to happen, we want to know HOW.
In my 40 days, I have seen more clearly that anxiety is less about what and much more about HOW. God could clearly speak to us about a detail in our lives, through his word, Spirit and counselors, and then we discount THAT outcome because all possible processes to reach that outcome are CRAZY. We didn't doubt God's power to do what He said, we doubted that He could come up with any possibility that we had not thought of to achieve it.
Our response to God seems to be: I'll do anything you ask me to do, as long you let me figure out the best way to do it.
Our new response needs to be: I'll do anything you ask me to to do, and I will do it the way that you are asking me, forgive me if it seems crazy.
Tom attends Wintonbury with his wife, Margy, and their two adult sons. While retired from work due to a disability, Tom is an active and faithful servant of the Lord.
