Lights on the Runway: Wise Counsel
About fifteen years ago one of my mentors, Tom Yeakley, shared an illustration with me which has stayed with me for years. Tom shared that the tools God gives to discern His purposes are like lights on a runway.
Have you ever passed a small regional airport at night? Maybe, in the midst of the darkness, you’re still able to see the bright lights on the airport runway. When we pass an airport at night we can’t always see an actual runway, but we know it’s there because we have indicators that point us toward the runway.
In much the same way, God has given His people lights on the runway so we can begin to move forward with confidence believing there is a runway from which we can land or take off. God gives us five lights on the runway.
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Runway Light #3: Wise Counsel
“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” Proverbs 15:22
Practically speaking, one of the best things we can do when desiring to hear from God is to attempt to hear together in community with others. Think of a handful of trusted and friends/family members, who are committed to making Christ first in their lives, and invite them to pray, discuss and speak truth into your life in the midst of your discernment process.
Author and long-time educator Parker Palmer, in his book ‘Let Your Life Speak,’ wrote about an experience of how he heard from God through other people.
He had been offered the opportunity to become the president of the small educational institution. He had visited the campus, spoken with the administrators, faculty and students and had been told that if he wanted to job it would most likely be his. He was quite certain that this was the job for him.
But Parker was a Quaker, a tradition that relies heavily on silence and listening to God. There’s a longstanding tradition in the Quaker community called a “Clearness Committee.” In it, a person seeking direction calls a half-dozen trusted friends to help discern calling and God’s voice. In the process, friends are not there to give advice but to spend several hours asking honest and open questions to assist in the process.
Looking back, he wrote, it was clear that his real intention was to convene the group in order to brag about being offered a job he already decided to accept rather than to discern with others.
Through the process, Parker discovered his desire to be president had much more to do with his pride and selfish desires than with hearing God. When the Clearness Committee ended, he walked down the hallway, picked up the phone and called the school to withdraw his name from consideration. Had he taken the job, he admitted, it would’ve been very bad for him and a disaster for the school.
We don’t have to develop a formal “clearness committee” like the Quakers do, but we can invite trusted friends, mentors, pastors, family members into the process to help us hear from God together. We can invite them to pray with us and for us. It may be specific, or it may help you sort out motives that are unhelpful in order to discern what God desires.
A friend of mine who was wanting to hear from the Lord about a particular issue invited a group of 5 or 6 friends whom he trusted and who desired to hear from the Lord to pray with him. In fact, he asked those friends if they would commit to fasting and praying for him every Wednesday during lunch; instead of eating they would use that time to pray specifically for him in that season. It was a beautiful way to see the body of Christ come together to help my friend hear God speak. And God showed up.
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These are taken from the original ebook, 5 Lights on the Runway, which is available to download