How Far Would You Go?

Where He leads me I will follow, I'll go with Him all the way. 

When God calls you to serve Him in any particular capacity, how far are you willing to go to serve Him?

That question seems to come up in my life quite often. When I was a teenager I committed to follow Jesus wherever He chose to go. Put me on the mission field in Russia or China? Bring it! Serve as a layman? Let's do it! Whatever He wants me to do - that's what I want to do! 

And God has put me to the test... multiple times. When I was looking at colleges, I knew that the Lord wanted me to go into ministry. I wasn't totally sure what capacity He wanted me in ministry, but I knew full-time ministry was in my future. That's what God wanted for me. The problem was I wanted to go to one college that focused on ministry, and my parents wanted me to go to a different college that focused on education. Both were great schools. Both would give me the opportunity to serve in full-time ministry. But my parents wanted me to go to this other school. 

As a person who was living in my parents' home and planned on continuing to do that until I graduated from college, and as a person whose parents were helping to pay for college, I knew that I had to obey them - to go to the school of parents choosing. That was following God. Even though deep down in my heart, I personally felt that I should go to the ministry school. God had given my parents responsibility over me, and He had given me the responsibility to obey my parents. How many times had I been told that if I obeyed my parents, I was obeying God? It was the right thing to do, so I applied and proceeded to prepare to attend that college. As I did this, God changed my parents hearts so that they actually wanted me to go the ministry college. We all knew that going to the ministry school was where God wanted me to be. God had simply tested me to see how far I would go to follow Him. It was not a comfortable life lesson to learn, but it was necessary. 

The important life lesson I learned that summer of my senior year came back into play a year ago. My husband and I were facing two choices. We had prayed extensively about both ministry options. They were incredibly different, requiring different skills with dramatically different people in dramatically different areas of the country. There was no specific reason that we would have chosen either option. But every time we knocked on the door that led us here, it swung wide open. We followed God.  He led us here. We wouldn't have chosen it for ourselves. He chose it. He asked us to follow Him, so we did. 

I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back. 

How far would you go to follow Jesus?