One wild woman: Jael (Judges 4:17-24)

This is an extract from Mick Duncan’s recent book, entitled Wild Ones, published by …. (Australia) and available by either contacting your local Christian bookshop or by emailing Mick at micduncan@woosh.co.nz

To become wild demands that we acknowledge the truth about ourselves (Deborah) and radical micro-obedience, it’s in the little things, is most often developed in our own backyards (Gideon) or in ordinary, everyday life. In these mundane places a spark may be lit that signals its time to go through the front and out into the world as outrageous people (Ehud). What then, do you do with the outrage you are likely to encounter?

Jael[1], speaks to us from the Book of Judges, when faced with a tough situation, when an enemy soldier arrives at her doorstep fresh from the battlefield. Sisera walked about 50 miles to Jael’s place, having escaped from the heat of the battle where the Israelites had began to defeat his army. Significantly, he is the commander of the army which puts Jael in a complex war zone situation. What is she to do? She knows the victorious Israelites will be on his tail trying to track him down, and anyone caught aiding and abetting him would have to do a lot of explaining. Jael brings out her weapons; a big-hearted welcome (she gives him her own bed), generous hospitality (he asks for water but she gives him milk), and courage (inviting him in, in the first place). To these weapons are added two more, a tent peg and a hammer!

As he lies absolutely exhausted on the bed, soothed into a sleepful state by the milk and her hospitality, she drives the tent peg through his temple. This is surely one of scripture’s most disturbing stories. We are told in the New Testament that all of scripture is inspired by God and is useful[2] which of course begs the question: How on earth is this chilling story of Jael useful to us today? More specifically, how do her actions assist us in our quest to know what to do with outrage? For an answer we need to back the truck up a bit, and explore the issue of guidance.

At the crossroads
What does it take to be an Abraham or Sarah, a Noah, an Ezekiel or St. Francis, Father Damien, or Bonhoeffer? How do you get to walk on the wild side? Maybe, it has something to do with a strong sense of guidance, so you really know when God is asking you to do something and step out without hesitation, no matter how unusual, idiotic or foolhardy the task may seem. Take the story of Bruce Olsen. At the age of 16-years he attended a missionary conference. He found himself both appalled and attracted to the crazy missionaries that spoke. For the next few years he was torn apart by a torrid internal debate. On the one hand, he had set his heart on being a professor of languages, but in his spirit he couldn’t forget the message of the missionaries and the inner calling to become one himself. In time, God changed his heart. Olsen writes, “Gradually my pleasant sane dream of becoming a linguistic professor vanished into this ridiculous idea of going to other countries to talk to savages about God. I knew it wouldn’t make sense to my parents; it didn’t even make much sense to me. But over the months, as I walked to school, as I sat and daydreamed in class, as I read the Bible, He gave me something I’d never bargained for: compassion.”[3]

Olsen took a leap of faith and applied to a well known mission board in Venezuela. After much waiting the long expected reply came and to his great disappointment, he learned he had not been accepted. Surprised and shattered, he returned to his earlier dream of becoming a professor of languages. God however, had other ideas. Olsen describes what happened:

But many times as I studied in the library I felt God nudging me, “Bruce, I want you in South America.”

“But, Lord, I tried that. Don’t you remember? I was turned down.”

“Turned down by whom?”

“Why, by the mission board, of course.”

It was though God were smiling at me, amused and tolerant. “Bruce, I didn’t turn you down. I want you in South America. Follow me.”

“God, this is ridiculous. How can I go down there without a mission board? You want me to go down there without anyone to take care of me? I mean – without protocol and all?”

“Bruce, I’m in South America too.”[4]

And so it was that Bruce eventually became a missionary. At the age of 19-years he boarded a plane for Caracas with only a few dollars in his pocket, not knowing what would await him upon his arrival. On the flight he tried to relax but eventually panic took hold. “All I had,” he said, “was a drive within from God that nearly everyone else thought was foolish.”[5] The upshot of it all was that he ended up living with the Molitone tribe for years. He reduced their language into writing and translated several New Testament books into the Molitone language. He also taught this tribe health measures, agricultural techniques and the value of preserving their cultural heritage. What started out as crazy ended in a celebration. And arguably, it was this strong sense of God driving him that launched him out into his wild venture.

Jackie Pullinger’s story echoes that of Olsen. She also landed in a country with nothing and no idea of what to do. Disembarking from the ship Jackie was confronted by the immigration officer who stammered out in staccato English a number of questions:

“Where you live?”

“I don’t actually have anywhere to live yet.”

“Where your friends?”

“I haven’t got any of those yet.”

“Where you work?”

“Well, no – I don’t have a job either.”

“Where your mother?”

“She’s in England.”

“Where your return ticket?”

“Oh, I haven’t got one of those.”

“How much money you got?”

“About H.K. $100.”[6]

The immigration officer had had enough. He demanded that she not get off the boat. While she awaited his return, Jackie imagined having to return to England and facing the criticism of her friends and family. She could hear them saying, “Told you so! Fancy getting off round the world and leaving all the plans to God – very irresponsible!”[7] Suffice to say, Jackie got off the boat, found herself in the drug infested Walled City of Hong Kong and has served there for the past 37 years. Like Olsen, a strong sense of guidance drove her decisions. One night, years before she landed in Hong Kong, she received a dream. In it, she and her family were looking at an atlas of many countries. A pink colored country stood out from the others in the dream. Leaning over to see what it was, she read “Hong Kong”. In need of solitude to reflect on the dream and the course of her life, Jackie went to a village church to pray. Whilst there, she had “a vision of a woman – holding her arms out beseechingly as on a refugee poster.”[8] The woman in the vision represented those who needed the love of Jesus. And then finally, in the context of a worship service, she heard these words, “Go. Trust me, and I will lead you. I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go; I will guide you with my eye.”[9] She eventually boarded her slow boat to China and felt led to get off the boat in Hong Kong. The rest is history.

No postcards from heaven
If only it was like that for all of us. One of the very real problems with missionary stories like that of Olsen and Pullinger is that we tend to think that what happened to them ought to happen to us. So we have numerous potential wild ones going passive all over the place, waiting forever for God to give dreams, ‘words’, visions and the like. But what God does with some people he does not do all the time with all people. In a recent book, John Ortberg, courageously declared, “I have never received clear guidance at any major vocational crossroads of my life.”[10] You don’t often hear that sort of statement from senior spiritual leaders these days.

When I was finishing grad school, when I was going to my first church, when I was contemplating marriage, and even not that long ago when I began to think about leaving Chicago [Willow Creek] to come to Menlo Park – I would tell God that if he’d just send me a postcard with directions, I would gladly obey. But the postcard never came.[11]

Tony Campolo echoes Ortberg, when he writes, “Very seldom does God directly communicate any specific directions to Christians or tell them exactly what He wants them to do.”[12] A friend of mine discovered this in his senior years of being a Christian. For eight years he had been the leader of the Baptist movement of churches in New Zealand. At the conclusion of this leadership role, he and his wife wondered what was next for them. Pray as they did, nothing became clear. Having to make a decision they decided to make it themselves. They opted for a four year stint of life-stretching ministry in Port Moresby. On the three hour flight from Auckland to Sydney, he cried all the way. Leaving family behind was costly and launching out into the deep was frightening. This act of stepping out proved to be a turning point in their lives.

The crossroads in my own life have been numerous and I have struggled each and every time I have come to them. Like Ortberg and Campolo, the postcards and directions never came. The heavens did not part. There was no booming voice that said “go.” No bible verse, phrase or singular word struck me. Even as ‘charismatic Christians’ we received no angelic visitation, prophecy, word of knowledge or vision. God’s phone was off the hook, the heavens were shut, and no messenger or message was sent. Let me share some of those crossroads with you.

Soon after becoming a follower of Jesus I began attending Spreydon Baptist Church in Christchurch, New Zealand. This was and still is a large church but they grow bigger by becoming smaller. In other words, to be apart of this church one is strongly recommended to join a small group or cell of believers. Scared and shy, I stepped up and joined one. On one particular evening a mousey brown slender and pretty 20 year-old walked into the room. My eyes reacted and haven’t been quite the same since. The inevitable happened – we became friends and then dated. Unfortunately my upbringing hadn’t really prepared me for the world of intimacy and I could not handle being so close to Ruby. When she finally declared that she loved me, I ran a mile. At the time of my departure for Bible College in Australia it was all ‘off’ between us. Sitting in the theology lectures however, I found myself forever dreaming about her. It began to slowly dawn on me that I liked her too. I took this to the Lord in prayer and dutifully asked God to inform me if she was the ‘right one’. Months went by and still there was no reply from my heavenly match-maker. Then one day in yet another theology lecture, I did hear a voice, but not that of the lecturer. What I heard went something like this, “listen buddy, I will never have to live with Ruby like you will and so this is your call.” Frankly, I was being asked to make my choice, my decision, and my judgment call. This theology surprised me.

In 1985, six years after our marriage, we relocated to the Philippines. Our first day was unforgettable. We boarded a truck and were dropped off in the slum, with our few bags, clutching our two-year-old daughter Emily and nine-month-old baby Thomas. The leaders of the Mission helped us unload and then drove off into the distance. As they did, we huddled together in the doorway and I began to cry. We were literally surrounded by thousands of extremely poor people and we didn’t know a thing. We didn’t know their language, culture or community. Cooking, sleeping, bathing and how we would live were unknowns. As the night wore Ruby dropped off into sleep out of bewilderment and exhaustion. I lay awake and still, scared of the rats, spiders and cockroaches inside our plywood room and incredibly fearful of all the noises outside our thin walls. The sound of machine gun bursts in the middle of the night were especially unsettling.

Two weeks into our slum stretch Ruby and I had contracted a virus and were reduced to delirious state. All Ruby could do was lie on her back and stare into space or sleep. I just managed to look after the two little ones. We didn’t know anyone, had no phone and had to ride this through. Every fortnight we made our way to the Mission’s Retreat House where we spent two nights and three days together as a team. We will never forget the day we finally arrived after our first two weeks of slum living. No sooner had we lugged bags and kids through the high gate, than we dissolved into a bucket of tears. Colin and Janet Harrington, the Retreat Center couple, who had spent over 20 years in Indonesia and seen their fair share of missionary hardship, gathered us up in their arms and cared for us.

Our first Christmas Eve was a violent wake up call. In the dead of night we were suddenly startled by rocks being thrown onto our flimsy roof. All four of us huddled in a corner and prayed for protection. I managed to prize open a part of our plywood wall and could see that it was a local gang of thieves. Some months later while walking down one of the many muddy alleyways I was surrounded by another gang trying to scare me or see what I was made of. Soon after this an intruder broke into our home and unsuccessfully tried to steal my radio cassette player. We lived those early years very much on the edge.

During this time Ruby became pregnant with our third child. It was a very difficult pregnancy. Neither mother nor baby put on much weight and we were at a loss to know what was happening. A senior doctor at a good hospital failed to pick up the problem and so we continued to hope that all was well. A week from the due date Ruby was worried. An emergency operation was performed and our baby came into the world dead. They managed to resuscitate him and he was whisked away in an ambulance to another hospital. All the while Ruby lay on the operating table not knowing what had happened to her baby. Equally in the dark, I sat alone in a corridor.

For the next three weeks between looking after our two children, I darted all over metropolitan Manila racing from one hospital to see our sick son, and then joining Ruby in another hospital. During that time Ruby had not seen, touched or held her newly born son. All she had to go on were my daily reports. Each day as I visited Joseph, as we came to name him, I held his small feeble hand as he lay encased in the incubator infused with wires and dials. Father and son began to bond. Finally, a few weeks after his birth, Ruby was able to hold him for the first and only time. Joseph died in her hands. Early in the pregnancy Ruby’s body was invaded by some virus that got to the pancreas and affected how much oxygen Joseph received. If he had lived he would have been severely intellectually and physically handicapped. And all because of some tiny virus picked up in a slum.

So what made us go to such a place? We received no guidance and no postcards from heaven. To be candid, this decision to go to the slums was not God’s decision for us but our decision for God and the poor. Put simply, we acted as free-will agents. We experienced ourselves as decision makers. We chose between possibilities, we explored the option of living in a slum, we decided and then finally we stepped out into the unknown. Admittedly, other causes like our upbringing, church, faith or personality may have influenced this act. However there was no sense of coercion and no determinism other than self-determination. We were not acted upon but freely acted in a daring venture of initiative. We simply put up our hands and said we’d go.

Dare to take initiative
It is said that in the face of any crises there are usually four types of people. The first stick their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is happening; the second scratch their heads wondering what is happening; the third ask others what is happening; and then there are those that make things happen. Jael made something happen. She was a person of daring initiative. She could not bury her head in the sand and pretend that Sisera and the whole awful mess didn’t exist nor waste time scratching her head. Sisera was already at her tent door. She found herself frozen in time with an impossible situation. Her only way forward is an act of daring initiative, which renders her guilty[13] of breaking half a dozen of God’s commandments. The commentator Schneider, describes Jael as one who “acts independently”[14] and the type of person who takes “matters into their own hands.”[15] She is a person of initiative and is commended for this, even if her actual deed is morally repugnant. She expressed herself as a decision maker. Likewise, when I received no postcards from heaven about marriage or Manila, I too in Jael-ian fashion, expressed myself as a decision maker. I have three silver rings on my hands. The first is my wedding ring. It has a fish on it as does Ruby’s wedding ring. On another finger is my silver 25th wedding anniversary ring. Indented in it is an indigenous Maori design that carries the meaning of peace. But it is the final ring that is pertinent to this chapter. As soon as I spotted it I decided to buy it. Irrespective of price or Ruby’s rebuke, I wanted it. The two engraved Latin words say it all – carpe diem [Seize the Day].

I have lived in a number of cities around the world but in our present location I think I have come across at best a half-truth or at worst a heresy. This is best summarized in a puzzling little story about Melvin the monk. Melvin, an absent-minded monk, took a daily walk to read his breviary. Unfortunately, Easter Sunday had extra psalms to read and Melvin walked too far – right off a cliff. Fortunately, he felt something was amiss and grabbed a tree branch. As Melvin’s feet dangled 300 feet over the canyon, he frantically shouted,

“Help! Is there anyone up there?”

Suddenly the clouds parted and a loud voice boomed,

“I will help you. Are you willing to do whatever I ask?”

“Of course. What do you want me to do?”

“Let go.”

“Who are you?”

“God.”

“Is there anyone else up there?”[16]

This is the picture some have of God when they find themselves in a crisis. That somehow it is all up to God if we’re to be rescued, that it’s in his job description to do everything for us. The story of God insisting ‘Melvin the monk’ simply let go of everything and it will be alright, is very popular in my city. It sounds so spiritual and scriptural, but is it? This chapter will argue that this idea of ‘letting go and letting God’ is at best a half truth and at worst a heresy! Christians by their hundreds of thousands are ‘going passive’ because of this teaching. In the face of issues in their own lives or complexities in the world, they are waiting for God to step in and do something when in fact he might be waiting for them to do something. In the face of this world’s complexity, its poverty and lostness, we are to seize the day and make bold decisions, even if such decisions lack certainty. A vivid biblical example is the story of Jonathon, the son of King Saul:

Saul was staying on the outskirts of Gibeah under a pomegranate tree in Migron. With him were about six hundred men, among whom was Ahijah, who was wearing an ephod. He was a son of Ichabod’s brother Ahitub son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, the Lord’s priest in Shiloh. No one was aware that Jonathan had left.

On each side of the pass that Jonathan intended to cross to reach the Philistine outpost was a cliff; one was called Bozez, and the other Seneh.⁵ One cliff stood to the north toward Micmash, the other to the south toward Geba.

Jonathan said to his young armour-bearer, “Come, let’s go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised fellows. Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few.”

“Do all that you have in mind,” his armour-bearer said. “Go ahead; I am with you heart and soul.”

Jonathan said, “Come, then; we will cross over toward the men and let them see us. If they say to us, ‘Wait there until we come to you,’ we will stay where we are and not go up to them. But if they say, ‘Come up to us,’ we will climb up, because that will be our sign that the Lord has given them into our hands.”

So both of them showed themselves to the Philistine outpost. “Look!” said the Philistines. “The Hebrews are crawling out of the holes they were hiding in.” The men of the outpost shouted to Jonathan and his armour-bearer, “Come up to us and we’ll teach you a lesson.”

So Jonathan said to his armour-bearer, “Climb up after me; the Lord has given them into the hand of Israel.”

Jonathan climbed up, using his hands and feet, with his armour-bearer right behind him. The Philistines fell before Jonathan, and his armour-bearer followed and killed behind him. In that first attack Jonathan and his armour-bearer killed some twenty men in an area of about half an acre.

What I like about Jonathan was his declaration of “perhaps the Lord will act on our behalf.” His venture was not one of certainty. He wasn’t sure that it was a done deal or God’s will. It was instead, a daring venture of initiative. Of this incident, Campolo writes, “There comes a point where a guy has got to do something and not just stand around with some ephod [which was used to ascertain God’s will] waiting to figure out for sure what is supposed to be done. The stakes are high, but so what? You’ve got to take a shot at it. In the midst of all the talk, somebody has just got to go for it.”[17] Jonathans are urgently needed today. Those who can see that a hill needs to be taken, and of their own accord, step out and take an enormous risk. But you have to be a bit wild to be a Jonathan.

The writer of Matthew’s Gospel records the startling incident of a disciple walking on water,[18] but behind this scenes is a fascinating interplay between initiative and obedience. Peter, the disciple of Christ, while travelling in a boat with the other disciples, spots Jesus walking towards them – on the water! It is Peter who takes the initiative and asks Jesus if he too, in imitation of his master, might also walk on water. Peter asks that Jesus might “command” him step out on the water. Jesus tells Peter “come”. If Matthew’s report is to be believed Peter actually walks on the water. But the sequence was one of initiative, command, initiative, obedience. At the core of this incident is a young man who seizes the moment and dares to do the absurd. John Ortberg in his stunning book about Peter asks us to imagine the following:

Put yourself in Peter’s place for a moment. You have a sudden insight into what Jesus is doing – the Lord is passing by. He’s inviting you to go on the adventure of your life. But at the same time, you’re scared to death. What would you choose – the water or the boat?

The boat is safe, secure, and comfortable.

On the other hand, the water is rough. The waves are high. The wind is strong. There’s a storm out there. And if you get out of the boat – whatever your boat might happen to be – there’s a good chance you might sink.

But if you don’t get out of the boat, there’s a guaranteed certainty that you will never walk on the water. This is an immutable law of nature.

If you want to walk on the water, you’ve got to get out of the boat.

I believe there is something – Someone – inside of us who tells us there is more to life than sitting in the boat. You were made for something more than merely avoiding failure. There is something inside you that wants to walk on the water – to leave the comfort of routine existence and abandon yourself to the high adventure of following God.[19]

Peter took a walk on the wild side in an act of extreme discipleship. There was no way Peter wanted to go the way of the masses and become a ‘boat potato’. We get one shot at life and in this life God will do much for us but he will not do everything. I firmly believe it is time that we recapture a daring sense of initiative, rediscover the act of seizing the moment and re-ignite the big idea of living audaciously and recklessly. We need to summon the courage to be all that we were created to be; people who think, choose, decide, step out and act. These are the steps Peter took in his decision to become a water-walker.

Freedom to act
Bonhoeffer was besotted with the Bible. Unlike many of us, he was a serious student of the inspired Word of God. One of the many spiritual disciplines that he practiced was carrying a portion of scripture through the day, chewing over it, and digesting it. Scripture was quite literally his food for the road. It sustained him, strengthened and sharpened him. It was a guide for his soul and a lamp to his feet. He eagerly sought its counsel but on those rare occasions where Scripture was silent, Bonhoeffer made use of another gift that God had graciously given him, his mind. Faced with the Hitler crisis, Bonhoeffer had to think for himself, be a decision maker and act. Bonhoeffer believed that he had to become a person who “acts in the freedom of his own self.”[20]

For some, a disciple’s freedom may appear a contradiction in terms, or an oxymoron. A disciple by definition is one who follows. Freedom, however, implies the opposite. Far from being ‘other-determined’, inherent in freedom is the notion of self-determination. There is however a paradoxical feature to much of Scripture where seemingly opposite things are held in critical tension with each other. Disciples follow and obey but also charge ahead with passion based on their own training, understanding and the circumstances they face. Rather than reducing discipleship to obedience, it can be expanded to include the freedom to think, choose, decide and act.

Let us not forget that God acted freely in creating the world and us. In a gracious, loving and daring act of freedom and initiative, God created. We are told that God created humans in his own image. Walter Brueggemann arguably offers one of the most helpful ways to describe how humans bear similarity to God:

There is one way in which God is imaged in the world and only one: humanness! This is the only creature, the only part of creation, which discloses to us something about the reality of God. This God is not known through any cast or molten image. God is known peculiarly through this creature who exists in the realm of free history, where power is received, decisions are made, and commitments are honored. God is not imaged in anything fixed but in the freedom of human beings to be faithful and gracious. The contrast between fixed images which are prohibited and human image which is affirmed represents a striking proclamation about God and about humanness…the human creature attests to the Godness of God by exercising freedom with and authority over all the other creatures entrusted to its care…the image images the creative use of power, which invites, evokes, and permits.[21]

Seen in this light, we have a picture of creation that “was endowed with freedom and choice,”[22] be it God’s freedom to create or humans created with the capacity for freedom and choice. Likewise Jesus acted in freedom. In the Gospel of John, we read of Jesus saying that he will lay down his life “of his own accord [italics: mine].”[23] Schnackenburg suggests that this speaks of “the sovereignty of the Son” and “as something decided by himself and of his own free will.”[24] On the one hand, John is careful to note that Jesus lived his life as one who depended upon the Father in all things and who sought only to please the Father. But, on the other hand, the Son, like the Father, also acted in freedom. In Greek, to do something of one’s own accord (authairetos) has the idea of self-choosing,[25] or willing something of themselves,[26] a free choice.[27] Metaphorically, it carries the idea of doors opening by themselves.[28]

Soren Kierkegaard believed that we only truly experience our own existence when we act, and make significant choices. What mattered for Kierkegaard was the subjective choice, the leap of faith, a commitment to the absurd. It was not so much what you know, but how you react. Try and capture the spirit of this man’s thought in the following quotations:

It is dangerous business to arrive in eternity with possibilities that you have prevented from becoming actualities… Trusting in God, I have ventured, but I have failed – there is peace and rest and God’s confidence in that. I have not ventured – it is an utterly unhappy thought, a torment for all eternity.

A person can distress the spirit by venturing too much… But a person can also distress the spirit by venturing too little. Alas, but this comes home to him only after a long time, perhaps after many years when he is living in the security he sought by avoiding danger. Now he must experience the truth that he was untrue to himself. Perhaps it does not come until old age, perhaps not until eternity. In any case, the thing to do about venturing too little is to admit humbly before God that you are coddling yourself.

We delude ourselves into thinking that to refrain from venturing is modesty, and that it must please God as humility. No, no! Not to venture means to make a fool of God – because all he is wanting is that you go forth.[29]

Make up your mind

Why are there so few wild fools? How do you become one? Is it by a sovereign act of God? It seems to me most believers would like to think so. That way, if they’re not wild, its God fault and they can continue to be mild. Christians look at a Damien or a Pullinger and explain them away as God’s special ones. They exalt these wild ones to the status of heavenly creatures making it easier to excuse themselves from following in their footsteps. Of course there is an obvious contribution of God’s grace in Jackie Pullinger’s life, but she had a significant part in shaping who she became. She wanted more out of her Christian life so she went after it. She went to her pastor for direction and followed through on his outlandish advice. She packed her bag and placing one foot after the other walked the plank onto the ship. Similarly, with no room for a ‘quiet time’ Father Damien stood to his feet and ‘foolishly’ declared himself fully prepared to be shipped to the death infested island of lepers. Regardless of the call of God to be a priest and his life of prayer, it was he who said to his soul and body, stand!

It is in choosing, taking a leap of faith and acting and that we see true wildness expressed. Wild ones are shaped on the anvil of human decision making. You may have been brought up on the erroneous idea that in becoming a believer we have been freed from the responsibility of decision making and that we no longer determine our own destinies. Our responsibility, you may argue, is to submit to every decision that God makes for us and anything less is heretical. Tony Campolo is frustrated with this concept of a God who has pre-packaged our destinies:

I find that most Christians, especially the young people I meet on the speaking circuit, are particularly keen to have a God who worked out a plan for each of their lives before they were ever born. Such plans would relieve them, as individuals, from having to work out their own salvation “with fear and trembling,” as the Bible tells them to do. The fact that the Bible nowhere suggests that an overall divinely constructed plan for their lives will ever be made available to them does not keep them from expecting special revelations providing just that. Over and over again I am confronted with young people who ask me in a pleading voice, “Tony, how can I discover God’s will for my life?” These young people have been led to believe their destiny has already been designed and all they have to do is submit to this grand design. Then, and only then, they feel the will to be able to live lives pleasing to God.[30]

Invariably it is those who are excessive in their acts of ‘waiting on God’ or ‘submitting to God’ who end up walking on the mild side. For empirical data to support this, just look around at most of our churches. They may look very spiritual in all their waiting upon God but such tarrying is often an excuse not to decide, and boldly go where few have gone before.

There is an amazing story about an 83 year old ‘shut in’ who was in failing health and couldn’t leave her house. Despite her circumstances she took initiative, went where few for her age have gone before and contacted Amnesty International asking if she could assist in some way. They informed her she now had the responsibility for obtaining the release of a political prisoner in Indonesia. With pen in hand she proceeded to write countless letters to prison officials, family and government officials. After many months she received a letter from the prisoner:

They kept seeing and hearing my name. I was lost. I was nothing to them. They had locked me away for years with no cause. But you wouldn’t let them forget. Thank God for you, my woman. You kept my name alive.

When they finally released me, they said my file was two inches think with correspondence. Most of it was from you. They said the file was too much trouble for just one prisoner.

I owe you my life. Words can never express my thanks. May every political prisoner’s life become two inches thick.[31]

This woman seized the day; she put her hand up and stepped out into the unknown. Age is no barrier to initiative taking. You can be a Jonathan or a shut in; all you have to do is make a decision. Admittedly such decision making can be hazardous and it is not a call to act randomly and do whatever you like. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s decision to join the plot to assassinate Hitler was no spontaneous act. And believe it or not, the decision of Jael to drive a nail through Sisera’s head was based on certain harsh realities. Our decision to go to the slums was carefully made. For those who struggle to be decision makers and have sense the need for some guidance should make sure the read my final chapter entitled Don’t Do Random.

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