A Sign From God

God’s had me take the most unusual jobs.

One of these jobs is holding a sign on a street corner, advertising for a local business, a seemingly mindless, demeaning job.

This is a unique journey God has me on, specifically tailored to where I was. Not everyone needs to hold a sign. But there is where God put me.

Now, being on the corner again reminds me of everything God has taught me in these thirteen years.

Being here reminds me of the breakings and dealings and victories that my obedience to God’s will has taught me.

I understand better why it’s so important to find God in the moment, because our moments become patterns, and our patterns become our life.

So much so, that as I pick up my sign and face the traffic coming from all directions again, it transports me back to all the experiences I have had doing this.

I began my journey into the high places of God thirteen years ago with a picture of what I was going to find.

All my efforts to accomplish my vision, my idea of how it should go, have mostly gotten in the way of God’s vision, God’s idea of how it should go.

This experience of holding a sign on a street corner was the perfect place for me to come to grips with the fact that I didn’t need everything else.

All that extra effort that kept my mind full, but my heart empty.

I wasn’t very good at it at first.

I kept wandering off, trying to find other things. I understood why so few stuck with God’s will. It is not easy for the flesh, nor does it make sense to the brain.

Following God’s will, whatever you do, is not easy for the flesh, nor does it make sense to the brain.

Those of us holding that sign, we thought maybe it was about us. We thought we were the main attraction.

So we performed tricks, showing off, thriving off people’s admiration.

But it was never about that.

God broke me of that over years as my pride and stupidity wore down my body, until my wrists would experience sudden pain in the middle of the night that was so intense, it would wake me up out of a dead sleep, and then gradually subside.

I stopped showing off during the day and the pain would leave.

Sometimes I would anyways, and it would almost immediately return.

God was dealing with me, waving a warning flag.

“Knock it off, John. It’s not about you. The spectacle of John is a distraction.”

Gradually, as I reluctantly let go of my circus moves, I started to see the people past my spinning sign.

Hungry. Tired. Listless. Teenagers, old folks, businessmen.

All kinds passed by, hundreds and thousands of them.

Gradually, I began to wonder how I could care for them.

So, on my sidewalk sanctuary, God started teaching me about prayer.

I doubted how effective prayer was, so God showed me it was, bringing people that testified of the effects of my prayers.

I made specific prayer requests, unaware of how God was going to meet them.

Then I watched as God used my simple obedience to answer those prayers for others, beyond my comprehension.

“God, give that hopelessly depressed person joy,” I prayed.

And later that same lady testified:

“I was driving and I was hopelessly depressed, and I saw a man holding a sign on a street corner on a grey, depressing day in the snow. It was the kind of day where EVERYONE was depressed, but he had joy! I realized that if he could have joy, I could, too!”

God taught me how to make my prayers more effective, teaching me to be still and wait on Him and only move as He moved me.

And, still, I was learning.

Learning how to respond to the people He brought to me, not dismissing the weirdos that approached me on the street, but continually learning how to let go of my understanding and be sensitive to His leading to speak His words.

All this time, it’s looked like I was working to help a business with their sales.

In reality, I was about my Heavenly Father’s business, learning how intercede and discern and speak to the people His heart was breaking for.

Not long before, I was chasing this idea of being a big businessman, with lots of things to do, lots of irons in the fire, filling my mind while my heart ran empty again.

So God had to take me back to the corner, crucifying my soulish efforts, my attempts to be somebody, back to the beginning.

Back to simplicity. Back to Him.

The many breakings of my self-righteousness and resentment came to light as I worked again with people who are different from me.

But as I picked up my cross again yet again on the street corner, I remembered none of it mattered.

Nothing mattered but Him and His voice.

Simplicity returned.

“Let your light shine,” God spoke to me this morning.

Thankfulness for all my breakings filled me today as I let my light shine on the corner. I poured out my thankfulness to Him, entering His presence.

Joy filled my heart again, joy simply to be in His presence.

On the corner again, I continued to stay sensitive to everyone God brought to me.

Instead of circus moves, I held my sign still so my sign could be clearly read by all and pointed the way to what it was all about—not me, not my moves, I was only a messenger.

As I ministered to God through my thankfulness and joy today on the corner, a truck pulled up beside me.

“I’m thankful you’re working and not begging,” the man told me, before handing me a $100 bill.

In his gesture, I felt God’s blessing, God ministering to me as I ministered to Him.

As I gratefully took the money, God spoke to me yet again.

I didn’t need to be a big businessman to find provision.

I simply needed to trust Him and stay in His Presence, following Him wherever He led me.

God has had me on the perfect school this whole time, far past my understanding, teaching me to bow, to make myself so little and insignificant.

To be just a sign waver, so I could decrease enough to give Him place.

I am still going through it, but I am so grateful.

I am in School, the School of Christ.

This is the obedience to God’s leading that brings forth the precious fruit of the earth.

Wherever you are, whatever God has you doing, He’s moving more powerfully through it than you realize.

I can truly see the reality of the verse: “whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your heart.”

As you and I both continue to seek God in the individual classrooms He has us in, continuing to be whole-hearted and look through Heaven’s eyes, we see everything differently.

We can glimpse Heaven’s plans through the human toil.

Comprehending and tracking with His divine lessons through the experience makes everything worth it.

It’s a never ending schooling that becomes more amazing as it goes.