Pizza Delivery - Why Stop?

I mentioned in my last post one of the lessons I learned in delivering pizza for the past six months. Today I want to answer the questions, Why stop? If you read here on why I started, you'll see it was due to financial pressures. So one would assume that by stopping delivery, that those financial pressures are gone. That is not the case at all. The reason I stopped is due in part to one of the main, unstated reasons why I started.

What I didn't discuss in earlier postings is why pizza delivery in relation to all the other ways I could have earned money. Part of it was that I have always been intrigued by it and the other, more significant reason is that I really felt God leading me into it. The circumstances for the job at Papa John's were such that I was extremely clear personally that they were orchestrated by God. I have never been more clear in my life of God's leading to take on a new venture. So there I was, needing additional income and following God step by step to see that need provided.

But what do you do when the need is still there, but you sense God saying, "Stop" What then? That is where I had been for a week or two. Still in need of the income, but believing that God no longer wanted me to deliver pizza. That is a hard emotion to convey in words, and even harder to deal with personally. "Is it really God I'm sensing or is it just me?" "Why would God want me to stop, he knows we still need the money?" These are just a couple of the questions I asked myself on my journey. So there I was struggling to do what God wanted, but now sure how to proceed.

I finally had a moment of clarity. If it was God leading me to stop the Pizza delivery, then my delay and indecision was really disobedience. I needed to either trust what I sensed to be God's prompting in my life and act in faith, or not trust what I sensed to be God and continue to rely on my own thoughts and ideas. Wow! Putting it that way made me ask myself different questions. "God do I trust you enough to provide for me in ways that I don't yet see?" "God is my faith in what I can do and see or in what you can do and say?" "God, am I crazy to even be thinking about doing this?"

This is when I reflected on the life of men such as Abraham, the friend of God, who also had to take tremendous steps of faith in trusting what God told him, which was even more crazy than what I believed God was telling me. How did Abraham even know that he could trust this God? He had to have faith and trust in God's personal promises to him, as do I.

So the decision has been made and I move forward with eager anticipation on what lies ahead. Resting in the knowledge that I believe I have followed God's prompting in my soul and waiting to see how he wants to use this in the days and weeks ahead.