When God assigns us a task, or provides us with a vision, a natural tendency is to rush in, attempting to outwork our vision or task immediately. Very often however, God chooses to allow an incubation or gestation period before the vision is realized. God uses this period to teach us many things; patience, persistence, trusting etc. Basically God wants us to work with Him, He knows how best to outwork our vision and if we allow Him He will create the right set of circumstances to make it happen.  

I remember many years ago, my wife Marie and I believed The Lord wanted us to start an outreach group in our home, targeting none Christian neighbours. We had not lived in that particular neighbourhood very long and knew only a few people in the area. The people we did know were none responsive to our Christian beliefs and our vision. We discussed this vision with our then Pastor along with a few Christian friends. They were all reasonably encouraging, but offered nothing in the way of practical help or assistance. It was suggested to us, that we should cover the entire neighbourhood in prayer as a starting point. This seemed a good idea, and for the following two or three months Marie and I walked the streets of our suburb, praying for our neighbours. The added benefit to this course of action was that both we and our dog were getting some well needed exercise. During this period I drafted an open letter, inviting our neighbours into our home for coffee. We explained our Christian beliefs and our desire to establish a community group. This letter included our phone number, requesting interested people to call us for more information. We had a thousand copies printed (it was much cheaper printing in bulk). We showed the draft of this letter to a few people in our church, some suggested we should not mention our faith, as this might put people off! Others said we should not include our phone number, in case of crank calls! How else were people to contact us? No one could provide us with an answer to this question!

When the letters finally arrived from the printers, Marie and I wasted no time. Our Golden Retriever, Dancer, had by now become accustomed to his nightly walks and it was with an air of excitement that we all set out to deliver the letters. We methodically covered every street, Marie walking one side of the street, myself the other, dropping a letter in every house in the suburb. Dancer had divided loyalties and wandered from one to the other, interspersed with his many calls of nature (How can dogs hold so much fluid?). This whole exercise took us around six weeks and by the time we had delivered the last of our letters, we were all very fit and knew our new suburb extremely well. Dancer certainly knew every tree and every lamp post. All in All we had spent around five months and almost two hundred dollars (no small amount back then) in printing costs. The net result of our efforts was one phone call from a lady who wished us well, but explained she was returning to Europe and would not be available for any meetings!

We then learnt how Job must have felt. We were subjected to a lot of un-requested advice, a lot of “I told you so” (though I don't recall anyone telling us so, before we started) and the suggestion that ‘perhaps we had not heard from God after all’. It was then we became serious. Marie and I really started to seek God (why did it take us so long?) Asking Him if this truly was His plan for us and if so, to please show us how we should bring it to fruition. About a week after we started praying I received a phone call from the Captain (Pastor) of our local Salvation Army church. In Australia the Salvation Army have an annual collection called the ‘Red Shield Appeal’ This involves, along with many other activities, members of ‘The Salvoes’ and volunteers walking door to door one weekend every year, collecting money on behalf of the under privileged and the homeless. I had been a volunteer collector for the previous few years, but up this time had never met the Captain. The reason for his call was to advise me that the ‘Red Shield Appeal’ was imminent and he was hoping I would volunteer again. I readily agreed, but as I was about to put down the phone The Lord reminded me of our vision for the home group. I asked the good Captain if we could meet and we set a time for the following week.

On the scheduled day of our meeting, I explained our vision and showed him a copy of the letter. I asked if it would be possible to be assigned my own suburb for the collection and also if it would be possible to hand deliver this letter and explain our vision to the people we met. I did not want to use this collection weekend for my own ends, but it seemed like a God given opportunity to fulfill two purposes at once. The captain not only agreed to my request, but said he would take our letter to the monthly pastor’s fraternal meeting, scheduled for the following day, and would have the local pastor’s pray over the letter. He also explained that the real motive behind the appeal was not really about money, but rather an opportunity for Christian witness!

When the weekend of the collection arrived we awoke to an absolutely filthy day. The rain was belting down and the wind was gale force (yes we do occasionally have bad weather in Western Australia). Undeterred by this turn of events, Marie and I donned our wet weather outfits; we looked like a couple planning to cross an ocean in an open boat as we set out on our mission. That first day was amazing! There is an awesomely wonderful feeling when we know we are in the center of Gods plan for our lives, God certainly proved this to be the case on that particular day. As we left our house the rain stopped on our side of the street, but was still beating down across the road. When eventually we had to cross the road, the rain moved across to the side we had been walking moments before and once again we were kept perfectly dry. This went on for about three hours. The rain never ceased, but we remained completely dry, each time we crossed the road the rain would move from us. It was really interesting seeing people totally soaked on one side of a street whilst we remained entirely dry on the other.

After about three hours we returned home for lunch. Although we were dry, we were incredibly hot underneath our oilskins, so we decided to take a step of faith. We reasoned that God had kept the rain from us for all of the morning; therefore we would trust Him to do the same in the afternoon. Well God did not let us down, it continued to rain for about two hours after lunch, the rain gradually easing and the wind dropping, not one drop of rain fell on Marie or myself the entire day! The following day began very overcast, by lunchtime the sun was shining, the afternoon becoming very pleasant indeed. The end result of all this was that we enjoyed a wonderful weekend. We met some delightful people, collected about five hundred dollars for the Salvo’s, but most importantly twenty three un-churched couples graced our home the following Friday evening and the group was born. The entire gestation period had taken about six months with quite a lot of pain and disappointment along the way but the end result was more than worthwhile.

God taught Marie and I so much, during and following the birth of this particular vision. In addition to lessons that would later prove invaluable, as we moved into ministry, He revealed to us very graphically that the same God who held back the rain for Elijah (1 Kings 17:1) will hold back the rain for ordinary people like you and me, providing we are doing our best at being obedient to His call on our life. He will protect us from storms, natural and spiritual, and will provide us with all the things we need to complete the task at hand. In other words, ‘when God appoints, He Anoints’.

W. Joe Ingram

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