So many of the great stories of faith involve “going”. Leaving the familiar and stepping into the unknown and uncertain. Abraham, called by God to leave Ur and journey to Canaan. Moses, appointed by God to not only leave Egypt himself but also to lead all His people back “home”. The Apostle Paul, leaving time and time again to take the Gospel all over “the Roman road” throughout Asia. Following God. Going where He sent.
Courage. Faith. Selflessness. These and many others leaving what was comfortable, secure, and familiar in order to follow God’s path for their lives. Their purpose was to bring God’s blessing to wherever He chose for them to go. Rightly we admire them, applaud them, and look for how to apply the truth of their faith to our own lives.
But sometimes it takes more courage, more faith, and more selflessness to stay. To remain in a job, a friendship, a location that isn’t “meeting your needs”, or is “no longer fulfilling”. Let’s look at what God said through the prophet Jeremiah to His people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile. There were priests, prophets, and just plain lay people who had been wrenched from their beloved country and transplanted into the heathen. hostile nation of Babylon. Babylon - where the language and the customs and the priorities were different. Surely they wanted to go home! To get back to where they were happy and secure. Back to the place that suited them best.
What did God say to them? Jeremiah 29:4-7 records His words to them - “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile, from Jerusalem to Babylon, ‘Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens, and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. And seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.’ “
Instead of giving them a new adventure to go on, a new mission that would be exciting and rewarding, He said stay. Not just stay but settle in. Accept - and embrace - that God sent you here. Live like you belong there. Plan to stay for more than just your generation. And make the place your own by working hard to bless it, to seek good for it. Not to leave it but to bless it.
Wow.
That’s an unusual assignment. We seem inclined to believe that God’s will for us is always to remove us from a place that is difficult, or undesirable or unfulfilling. We love to cling to His promise of abundant life and trust that He will shower us with grace and hope and prosperity. But perhaps we should pause before we automatically assume He wants us to move on to a “better future”. Perhaps we should consider that God’s place for us might be the very place that we want to leave. That He sent us into “exile” and that His blessings for us are contingent on our being a blessing in that hard place. In fact, that oft cited promise of God’s precious promise of “plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope”(Jeremiah 29:11) comes just four verses after this directive to stay !
Are you in a place that you’d rather not be? Do you feel like it’s a place of exile, of hostility, of joylessness? Are you longing to be in a place of blessing instead? God does want His children in places full of His joy and grace and peace. And sometimes He moves us “out of Egypt” and “into Canaan” to bless us so. But sometimes His plan is that we stay. That we purpose to “seek the welfare” of the place we’d rather leave and be the vessel that brings His blessing there.
Let’s seek Him to know which is His direction for us in each hard place. To go or to stay - that is the question. But let us always remember, the answer is always to be a blessing wherever He wants us to be!