Good morning…
One mid summer night in 2005, God startled me awake: “Host a Bible study in your home.” I recently pulled out the manuscript which chronicles my formation as a writer, a teacher, a daily God-listener. We now pick up the story after our life-changing move from a tiny town in Pennsylvania to the bustling city of Atlanta, Georgia.
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Excerpt from God Speaks Through Us: Hear, Obey, and Share the Voice of God by Sue Allen
How do I start over? That became my daily prayer. I felt rudderless, alone, lost. LORD, You know I loved my old life and I have no idea how to connect in this land of perfect-looking strangers. I don’t know where to begin.
I had moved twelve times between the ages of eighteen and forty, so I was a “pro” at pulling up stakes and, in a new location, setting up camp. After previous moves, I had always found a new church, a favorite coffee shop, and a regular place to work-out. Upon these pillars, I would rebuild a life. Relationships would gradually grow and, over time, a new lifestyle would take form. Somehow, this move felt profoundly different.
I was grieving the loss of my dream-life in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania: good friends, simple living, loving and being loved. In addition, my heart ached because we were uprooting our entire family tree from its Midwestern soil and replanting it in the South, a long, long day’s journey away from both sides of our extended family. I knew God was calling us back to Atlanta to settle. Steve was returning to a vibrant ministry which perfectly fit his spiritual gifts, while I was coming back to nothing. Absolutely nothing.
“From one man he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him,” explains Acts 17:26-27. Called away from my comfort zone, I was planted in the place of the LORD’s choosing, forced to seek Him and to reach out for Him. Yes, this move felt profoundly different. Trying the “church, coffee shop, and gym” technique only produced dead-ends. This time, all my efforts were failing to create belonging. It was as if every possible avenue out of my loneliness was “under construction,” impassable, closed.
I felt boxed into a corner with my self and my God. You hem me in – behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Psalm 139:5 was my daily experience. Hemmed in, I begged from my gut, LORD, take me on a journey from ‘my nothing’ to ‘Your Something’.
Days went by. Still lonely. Weeks went by. Nothing grew. Months piled up. No relief. The first year drifted into the second. Roadblock followed roadblock. Then after two years of my deepest, darkest depression, I woke one morning pondering a crazy idea. God startled me awake, “Host a Bible study in your home.”
A Bible study? In my home? But who would I invite? I don’t know anyone well enough to ask them into my home. I argued back. The nagging thought grew even zanier. I sensed God asking me, an untrained, ill-equipped, stay-at-home mom, to write the study and to entitle it God Speaks Through Us: Hear, Obey, and Share the Voice of God.
Let me reiterate. This Bible study was not written. I had filled pages in my journal most days for years, but I had never written a Bible study. It seemed God expected me to listen to His guiding voice, to write down what I heard, and to hand out one chapter each week for women gathering in our living room. Then the following week we would discuss the concepts, together making necessary edits. This was a crazy idea. A really crazy idea.
During my quiet time, God led me to the study’s central Scripture verse:
Here I am!
I stand at the door and knock.
If anyone hears my voice and opens the door,
I will come in and eat with him and him with me. – Revelation 3:20
Reluctantly, I wrote this verse on hand-made invitations along with the time, the date, and the location of the Bible study. Any acquaintance who smiled at me during church that Sunday got one of my invitations. I sent a few in the mail to old friends who lived too far away to travel to my new home for a weekly study. Apprehensively, in pure obedience, I passed out a handful of invitations and waited, doubtful.
When that first Tuesday morning arrived, I was surprised to hear a knock on my door, then another, another, another, and another. To my amazement, seven women gathered around me that autumn day in 2005. Two friends from an old life chapter drove a long distance to join me. Three women, who I knew minimally, appeared from our new church, and two brave souls, who had never met me, arrived because they had heard from friends about the Bible study God was beginning.
Eight of us circled in my living room. Each spoke of being in a time of transition. Each felt called away from the old and toward something new, but we did not know the details of the plan God was orchestrating. Each desperately wanted to hear the voice of the LORD before moving forward into the future. We talked about our lives, we discussed the structure of the study, and we held hands to pray. Time flew. Connection grew. Before ushering out the door these divinely chosen women, I handed out the first chapter. Our journey as the Tuesday Morning Group was just beginning.
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Since that surprising September morn in 2005, every semester in each school year I have hosted one, two, or three groups of women learning in our living room. Due to the craziness of our Coronavirus cut-off, this is the first fall in fifteen years I will not welcome women into our home each week.
Instead, God is drawing me close to write from scratch an online Bible study, much like He did in 2005. I sense the LORD saying, Behold, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs forth; do you not perceive and know it and will you not give heed to it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert (Isaiah 43:19, AMPC). Wilderness. Desert. Together yet apart, we are held in the greedy grip of this global pandemic. Do we perceive, know, and heed the guiding voice of God?
During this strange season, God is making a way for us to learn in own living rooms. Overextended teachers. Busy essential workers. Parents home with kids learning online. Those grieving great loss. People who travel or do not live in Atlanta. Caregivers who cannot risk contracting COVID. Those who are sick, vulnerable, compromised. God is making a creative new way in our wilderness, inviting us to the banks of a fresh water river.
Through Northside Church, we have a healthy line up of seasoned teachers shepherding women through Zoom and face to face classes at church. In addition, God is drawing me to teach differently this semester. Similar to the Bible study we wrote in 2005, God and I are creating, week by week, a God-guided, online study of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s beloved classic Gift from the Sea. We will each cloister with God from the comfort of our home, being shaped by the inspired lesson in our free time, then we will connect weekly with each other on a fun, out-of-the-box platform.
Browse through our class descriptions and register at this link: www.NorthsideUMC.org/womensclasses. Classes begin this Monday, September 14th.
…Sue…
P.S. Photo by My Life Journal from Lisboa, Portugal on Unsplash
