When God Leads You Where You Don’t Want to Go

For years, my husband and I had this running joke: Winter would come to our sunny home in the south, and I would say (through chattering teeth),
“Goodness, it’s cold! I sure hope the Lord never wants us to move up north.”
Upon hearing this, Jonathan would immediately pretend he was getting a call on his phone from a church asking us to move up to Canada.

Fast Forward to June 2018

There we sat at our kitchen table, with 3 people across from us. These 3 individuals were visiting us to see if Jonathan seemed like a potential candidate to pastor their church. After we ate lunch together, they gave us a gift from their state. There, at the top of the bottle in large green letters were the fateful words: “New Hampshire Maple Syrup.” New Hampshire!

The reality of the words and the meaning behind them filled me with genuine fear so that I began crying—right then and there—after opening up the very thoughtful, generous gift. I was afraid. What if God led us to a place where I didn’t want to go?

Three Months Later

On October 2, 2018, my four kids and I piled into our van (along with several houseplants semi- securely fastened in the passenger seat next to me) and began the 12-hour drive up to our new home in Concord, New Hampshire. I have vivid memories of looking at a map of the United States and being shocked at how far north we actually lived. After years of my husband joking that we were moving to Canada, we now live in a state that borders Canada.

What Happens When God Leads You Where You Don’t Want to Go?

Moving to a different part of the country is a relatively minor thing compared with other places God will lead. Maybe he’s led you to say goodbye to your spouse, face unprecedented financial hardship, or suffer extreme physical pain. Some of you face difficulties that are so personal that they’re almost impossible to share. My friend, maybe God has led you to a place you didn’t want to go in order to teach you things you would never otherwise learn. There are precious truths God has taught me during this season that I wouldn’t have learned if he had never led me to a place I didn’t want to go.

Here are three treasures you will discover when you follow God’s will instead of your own:

The Joy of Obedient Surrender
Obedience is easy when it lines up with your plans. If I tell my kids to come downstairs to watch a movie, they’ll happily obey because that’s something they want to do anyway. Obedience is tested when your will is crossed and your obedience means surrender. And yet, the Christian life is supposed to be a life of surrender, isn’t it?

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

“Present your bodies as a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1).

When a command doesn’t align with your desires, you have an opportunity to prove the depth of your allegiance to the Commander, rather than to your own preferences. Who are you devoted to? Yourself or God?

Obedience only brings joy when the person you’re obeying is working for your good. God assures us that he’s always at work for our good and his glory (Romans 8:28), so we can always trust him. But obedience is only joyful when you obey with your whole self—body, mind, and soul. It is possible for someone to go through the motions of what God wants them to do, and yet be 100% miserable.

I’ve met many people like this, haven’t you? They may have technically obeyed—moved where God wanted them to be, accepted a particular job, said no to a specific opportunity, etc.—but they never surrendered. When you fully surrender, you will allow God to have control over every part of your being: body, soul, mind, and emotions. Surrender is not a matter of putting your body in the place where God wants it, but of yielding your entire self to God. Only then is joy possible. Obedience only brings joy when it is accompanied by complete yielding to the will of your Maker.

A Deepened Trust
I love to have lots of support systems around me—people I can rely on, strong immune system, financial emergency fund, etc. But when God leads you to a place you don’t want to go, he often requires you to say goodbye to external support systems and depend fully on him. This is incredibly uncomfortable and often makes me feel like I’m drowning. But every time God removes external supports from my life, I find myself clinging to him in a deeper, more desperate way, wondering at how easily I put my hope in temporal things rather than eternal.

When you have to fully depend on someone, you discover just how strong they really are. In God’s case, there is no one stronger or more dependable.

“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm 20:7).

The Truth that God is Better
When God leads you away from something you were convinced you wanted—something you thought was the best possible thing for you—then you have some difficult questions to answer:

Who knows best? You or God?
Is God’s way always the right way?
Is God’s will really better than your desires?

These are difficult questions that should be answered slowly, honestly, and prayerfully.

But if you obey God’s leading, you will discover that he knows best and his will is best. Not only that, you’ll discover that he is better—better than your preferences, desires, and the life you were convinced you wanted. Better than anything. Your trust in him will grow deeper and your relationship with him will be characterized by loving, obedient trust rather than a heartless adherence to rules. There is nothing more precious. When you say no to something you really want in order to say yes to something God wants for you, then in time you will see the goodness of God so vibrantly that you may wonder why you ever desired those other things in the first place.

It’s been 1 1/2 years since my family moved to New Hampshire. God has used this move to teach me the joy of obedient surrender, the beauty of deep trust in his good leading, and the truth that he is better than anything I ever wanted. I can honestly say it now: God led me to a place I never wanted to go, but now there’s no place I’d rather be.

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