The challenge of walking with the God who knows me  

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Names changed throughout except in some cases where the person involved has been or is in ministry.

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If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. 2 Cor 5:17

Romans 8:14

“because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”

Work was busy, there were always many things to be done in the development of the system.  Yet in the midsts of this development came an inkling of a problem.  It only happened once, but “quite by chance” one of the units I was working on momentarily switched when it was not supposed to.  I had a choice:  Do I stop what I am doing and investigate or do I ignore it and press on.  No one else had noticed, and it seemed to be an unrepeatable event so I gave in to some forlorn hope that it would not happen again and pressed on with my current work load.  A couple of months later, the problem happened again.  This time, it was both public and embarrassing.  Now there was the pressure of a concerned management driving the investigation and eventual resolution to the problem.

Some months later, I noticed, “quite by chance”, that one of the communications cables had malfunctioned in quite a strange way.  I replaced the unit, but did not seek to overcome the underlying problem.  Again, I thought that I was too busy just at that moment to work on it.  A couple of months later I was called over to see our demonstration units.  Control had been completely lost.  All the units were operating at random, the whole company was there assembled to watch this rather bazaar performance.  Suddenly the pressure was on.  Instead of being able to resolve the problem quietly and at my pace, there was a lot of pressure.  Now I was being pushed by someone from above breathing down my neck.  The whole project was being held up by this issue.

Having seen this same situation occur a few times I began to conclude that the initial problem that I had seen in each case was a warning from the Holy Spirit;  that He in His loving care had seen the issue coming my way and had provided me an opportunity to resolve it without being centre stage.  In each case I had ignored the prompting, thinking I was busy enough.  Events proved that I had not really been that busy.  Not only was it a gentle warning from the Spirit but also a test of faith.   He who knows the end from the beginning gives his warnings when the resources are there and there is time to do something about it.  The question is: Do I believe the Spirit or do I believe my perspective of the situation?  In each case and I am afraid to say in many others, I have chosen my own perspective ahead of His.

Having understood this, the lesson was changed and the challenge increased.  I was working in London on a communications system when someone told me of a situation in a meeting that had just taken place.  One of the engineers had picked up the drawings of a circuit board that was part of a system going to a company acting as partner in a joint project.  There it was discovered “quite by chance”, that one of the dimensions was wrong.  The issue had been discussed and it was concluded that it would be too costly to throw away all of the units and start again, so they left it and hoped for the best.  

This situation had all the elements of a warning from God, but those in the development team, who were not Christians had obviously not seen this spiritual significance.  Now, was I going to risk appearing the fool and warn them?  Sadly the answer was no.  I left them to it and that decision was looked back on as one of the worst decisions that the group made.

WARNING