I just told a newly single mom - don't get a job.

I just told a newly single mom - don't get a job.

She just signed a lease and has no idea how she got approved, she has no idea how it's all going to work.

But she has story after story about Christ in her dreams, in her thoughts, and she's so far downstream of acting on what she's sensed and heard in clear obedience and faith.

This is uncommon to see especially since it flies in the face of "common sense," which shouts in a panic, "get a job!"

Her situation looks so challenged, so shaky, like a house of cards, with death all around her. Her mom died, dad died, all in the past year. Her husband is dead to his addiction. She's had one hard diagnosis after another. Broken pieces everywhere to pick up. She cannot speak of it without tears.

This has forced her inward, forced her to her knees in honest prayer, no pretense, where prayers become groans, where a man knows he knows not what he needs only that he needs the saving grace of the Lord. Every day she must invite the joy of the Lord in defiance of her circumstances because it is not natural for it to exist where she is.

It's hard to do this with the throng of misguided do-gooders and their endless ideas to help, job leads, and other ideas that are ignorant of what God's whispered to her. I was part of the mob, offering to help her find work, a paycheck to meet her needs, until I heard her story.

If she spoke her plan out loud and what the Lord has told her to do, most would think she is crazy! They'd question her causing her to question her own self, they'd quickly grow impatient and withdraw their support for her irresponsibility, or worse, like Job's friends, they'd turn on her for her many sins.

Maybe she is crazy, but I read the Bible and see God in her mess. I see the Lord standing with her in her trouble. I see roots growing deeper in the drought. I know how God sustains those who love him with manna. His ways are not our ways.

A warning and a rebuke for my brothers and sisters: Scripture used for counsel apart from the voice of God through the Holy Spirit is a clanging gong, its harmful, its satanic. There is no formula for love!

You want to love people, be quick to listen to their whole sad story, ask discerning questions if you can, watch for what God is doing in their midst, which is all that matters. Take on their burden like an animal skin, then intercede for the widow, lifting her before the throne - do all this before uttering a word lest you sin with your many words.

So much puffed-up wisdom stitching together verses based on our own experience, our own limited view, with a lust for ministry that has nothing to do with God's counterintuitive ways. Apart from God, you can do nothing. Without a contrite spirit, your calloused heart feels nothing. Through a cloud, you see nothing, not even the angel before you, not the glory in the suffering allowed so that we may see God's grace on this earth.

So yah, that was my advice. I'm not finding you a job, not yet at least. Just do what the Lord has clearly led you to do, the path is clear, the one that nobody will tell you to walk - but I will! She wept at the validation of the one truth in her life.

To that I added, forget every voice other than the clear voice of God you are hearing. Keep your eyes open, your ears open, tune your senses to God's voice like never before, get those big Mickey Mouse ears and listen for every prompt and check.

This is your season to go deep with him, I said. Every human will fail you, as you have seen, but He will not, he will sustain you. He will be the light on your path. Jehovah Jirah is the one who has given you peace to walk this out, and it is all you need. Retreat to him, He is the impossibility specialist, defender of the weak, I testify this to you today. Have faith enough to believe it.

That is your job.