July 30, 2025 Devo

Several years ago, God called me to help do a “re-start” with a church in Pennsylvania. It was a small church plant that never really got off the ground. There were 40-50 people who were renting a hotel ballroom to hold services. For five years, they tried to gain traction, but to no avail. When they called and asked me to come, I felt an unmistakable nudge from God to go.
But it didn’t make any sense. They already tried and failed. They were in a declining community, not a growing one. The economy there was flat at best, if not inching downward as well. They had no land and no stable facility to use. And to add insult to injury, it would be a $10,000 pay cut from my already barely-able-to-make-it salary I was currently receiving. Every friend in my church-planting circles I talked to thought as I did. Not the kind of place to plant a church. It was not a smart path. It was certainly not the path I would pick.
But it was God’s path. So we went. In our six-and-a-half years there, we experienced growth, life-change, and blessings that were beyond anything I have known before or since. All that most could see were the obstacles. God saw opportunity. Many of us who were there refer to those days as “magical.” They were certainly divine.
God’s paths are not always the clear ones. Walking through the Red Sea was not on anyone’s radar when the people of God left Egypt. It was not a strategy that Moses or any of the leaders would have ever dreamed of. But it was God’s path. And we’re still talking about it some 4000 years later. God sometimes takes us through places we would never go. His paths don’t always make sense to our human minds. They often don’t have the “markers” we look for when choosing our course. But that’s because we only see the beginning of the path. God sees the end. Only in hindsight did the Red Sea make sense to Moses.
It was only after we were well down the path that taking the church in Pennsylvania made sense to me. That’s because God sees what we can’t. His paths aren’t always obvious. He knows things we don’t and has plans we’re not aware of. Neither are His paths usually easy. They often require faith, dedication, and sacrifice. But His paths are always BEST. They take us to places we’d otherwise never go and experience things we would otherwise never see. When God calls, respond. When God leads, follow. Because even if YOU have no idea why He has chosen that path for you, HE does. It may even be a “magical” one! That’s God’s Word for you today.