Have you done something so crazy that your friends told you it was so? Did you unsuccessfully try to explain? I remember when Michelle and I decided that God’s desire was for me to quit my job, completely forfeiting a hefty retirement plan I was nearly fully vested in, and move to Kentucky. Advice came pouring in and I did try to follow wise counsel. In the end, however, the move came with no safety net and we were soon penniless, jobless, without the comfort of any close friends or family and living in a cockroach infested apartment.
I had heard stories about people being in such desperate situations that they had to pray and ask God for the next meal. I always thought such situations were regulated to the nineteenth century or to people who lived in remote lands. I found myself at my bedside kneeling next to my lovely wife asking God to somehow provide enough to put together a meal, any kind of meal. My friends would call and lovingly encourage us; sometimes I could hear them shake their heads in disbelief. Only a few dared to say what many were thinking, “What in the world are you doing?”
What would it be like if my life’s purpose was to die on behalf of someone else? What if there was another man awaiting execution for a crime of which he was guilty and I knew I was to volunteer to be executed in his place? What would my friends think then? Would I still receive encouraging phone calls and cards? Would they try to have me committed to a mental institution? What if I was wildly successful and powerfully influential and yet believed beyond shadow of doubt that voluntary substitution was supposed to be my end? Would my friends get it?
I think not.
Jesus’ friends didn’t get it either. They could see the sick healed, the deformed restored, the possessed freed, the multitude fed. They couldn’t see the end of it all; they did not want to see the end of it all.
“Listen to me and remember what I say. The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of his enemies.”But they didn’t know what he meant. Its significance was hidden from them, so they couldn’t understand it, and they were afraid to ask him about it.” (Luke 9:44–45, NLT)
My friends at Main Street are going to try to “get it” this Sunday coming.
TheNarrowRoadPursued 
It is really a mystery why, what others are intimidated by, they are convinced is the wrong thing to do. God’s callings on our life are simply the road on which He will provide what is best for Him, and for us. And our path is never more clear than one step behind Him if we desire to follow where He is going. It’s such an individual path too and I will never cease to glorify Him for the way in which He leads. I have never believed that Dad and my first act of “religious duty of surrendering you fully to the Lord for His glory was anything other than His requirement, in His time. Painful though it has been, we have been blessed to see His constant, faithful, provision and blessing upon what is surrendered to Him. In this case, you as a five year old boy.