The believer who intends to be used by the Lord to start a Local Assembly somewhere should not only pray to the Lord about the work and the fruit that it would produce. He should control his circumstances. If he is a civil servant and the Lord has not asked him specifically to resign for his secular means of support, then he should not just say that he will leave his posting to the Lord and will take for granted that wherever he may be sent is the place of God’s choosing. This is very immature thinking.
It is not faith. It is folly. If there was no enemy with his own plans and his own desires to distort the purpose of God, such thinking might have been acceptable. However, the believer is a soldier at war. God has His perfect will. The Enemy also has a will and he can only carry out his will by distorting God’s will. He is deliberately trying and working very hard with the goal of thwarting the purposes of God. He must not be allowed to go unchecked.
The believer who is in one station should pray that the Lord’s plans about how long he should stay in that station should be accomplished. He should in prayer bring to naught the plans of the devil to cause him to be transferred prematurely or after God’s time for him to be transferred is over. He should wrestle that God should have the upper hand and his transfer should be in His perfect timing. He should also, in the same way, control circumstances about the place to which he should be transferred when God’s timing to be transferred comes. He should have no preferences whatsoever unless God has revealed to him that He intends to send him to a particular place. If God has made such a revelation in a dream or vision or by an angel or by some other means, then going to that place is no longer a matter of choice. It is an obligation. He must now pray and pray. He must wage war on all the possible interfering forces of darkness and insist with God that the Lord should move in the heart of the Transfer Officer to send him to the place of God’s choosing. He should work hard at it only in prayer. He should not send some believer to go and see somebody and thereby distort the plans of God. If God cannot be trusted to move he hand of the Transfer Officer to send you to the place of His choosing, how can He be trusted to bring men and women to Christ in that place and cause them to grow? If God cannot be trusted with practical issues, how can He be trusted with spiritual issues? Think about it and make up your mind.
We already said that unless the Lord has clearly revealed to you that He is going to send you to a particular place, you should have no preferences. God will not guide a prejudiced person who has made up his mind as to the place where he wants to be and therefore wants God to do his (the man’s) will by sending him there. If you want to be truly directed by the Lord, you should rid your heart of all preferences, all possible advantages of one place over another, etc. You have made God your Supplier. Is there a place on earth where He cannot function as your Supplier? Some places may have lower cost of living than others, but you have been delivered from the worldly system of gain or loss. You have abandoned all money-desire, money-love and money-toil, and so gain or loss is nothing to you. Some places may be more comfortable to you, but the cross of Christ has set you free from all worldly lusts and all worldly loves and all worldly inclinations – tribal, divisional, provincial, national, etc. You are prepared to go anywhere that the Lord sends you. In that way, the Lord will overrule so that you are sent to the place of His choosing. However, you must bring the matter seriously to Him and smash the Enemy’s plans to disturb. Students in professional schools should begin to do the same thing about their postings at the time they will graduate. The Lord will not act to protect the passive. Passivity sides with the Enemy.
