God is at work,,,where He is needed

I have just returned from another visit to the northeastern section of Swaziland where our association of churches is in partnership with Wayne and Barbara Myers and the IMB.
I will be putting up some more reflections from the trip in later posts as well. I wanted to focus on what I felt was the most obvious lesson that I learned from God while there.
It has to do with seeing God work in ways we are not seeing as clearly in our churches here in eastern North Carolina.
Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean. Our team visited a lady who works at the B&B where we have been staying. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoing treatment. We went to pray with her and to encourage her family. When we arrived she was dressed and eagerly allowed us to visit with her family. Her husband said he believed that our coming was a sign from God that he was going to take care of his wife. She reported to us that this was the first day that she had been able to get up and dressed so early in the day and that this was also the first day in which she felt no pain or discomfort. Later in the day some of our team was in a store about ten miles away and there she was, smiling and shopping.
Another example, our team was to meet with the local chief's council to thank them for allowing us to meet in a tent crusade and to ask them to consider allowing a church to be started and to give them a piece of land. On our way there, our team stopped and picked up an old man walking. Turns out he was one of the council members and we were able to give him a ride. With his help, we were the first ones allowed to come to the council and they granted the request.
Another example, over two hundred people crowded into a tent that included around 75 children, many of which were orphans. When the service started, a powerful holy hush came over the tent and you would could not hear a sound except for the message being spoken.
In some quiet time our last day I was asking the Lord, "Why are you showing yourself so very clearly and although I do sense your presence in Eastern North Carolina, I do not see these things so powerfully. Is it just for here?" Then He spoke to me very clearly that it was happening because He is needed there and He is not needed so much here in eastern North Carolina. We are so good at doing everything our self and we also tend to act within such a safe predictable circle that we are quite capable of handling things our self. I felt quite convicted. I also realized how true it was. I have more contemplating to do about how we might find a way to even be able to recognize it.

The Hardest Will to Find

I have been doing some exploring recently in an effort to understand more this business of finding, knowing and doing God's will. Here is a lesson that God seems to be teaching me.
The real struggle in finding is probably not to find God's will. The truth is that God's will is usually clearer and nearer than we could imagine. It is also more than likely true that God's will may not be a minutely defined as we suppose.
What I am discovering is that the struggle is nailing down what the will of man is in truth. What we tend to do is to keep searching around for something called "God's will" that in fact is our will with a new name. How much sense would it make, either by logic or by faith, for God to so mask His will that we would spend endless days trying to "find" it?
The Biblical model seems to be more God screaming out at us, "Hey, here is my will, come and do it" He doesn't seem to be all that specific in the Bible either about details. It seems He is more into pointing in directions and aligning focus. The quest for the finest details appears to me to be more my trying to manipulate the renaming of my wants and wishes to God's will. Once I can rename it, I am now free to move forward. Problem is, it is still just my wants and wishes renamed.
Perhaps a simple solution is to go back to what we can see very clearly in the scripture and do everything that He has made clear until He tells us something differently. I suspect that I may have heard a distant voice say to me," Why should I take seriously your quest to know whether to stand on the left side of the pulpit with a green tie and 29 tulips in a brass flower vase in the very center of the communion table, when all the stuff I have written clearly is left unobeyed?"
The journey to know God's will, in my opinion, must first stop at the altar where my will gets fully dealt with. It seems to get much easier and clearer from there.