So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. (Luke 24:28-31)
The older I get, the more patterns I see in God’s word. As threads in a tapestry create amazing scenes, these themes of Scripture teach us about life in our Creator’s kingdom.
I have known for a long time that the bull’s eye of God’s work is our hearts. I have also learned that Larry Crabb was correct that, in the church, more people are committed to their self-protection than to knowing and doing the will of God.1
That being proven true too many sad times to count, it is evident that self-protection is a conflict with God. God is pursuing our hearts; we are doing everything we can to keep him and everyone else as far away from our inner beings as we can manage.
When I look back to my earliest experience of God, and I trace all the times it appeared that God was silent, or anything that fit this picture of a pause in God’s work, what did I learn about me in relation to him? How many times did I show my sarky and self-centered belief that I was a poor victim of God failing to keep his word, and how often did I feel in myself a hunger and thirst for the righteousness of knowing God better than I had ever known him before?
And today (I would say “by accident”, but it was really “by divine appointment"), I looked up the Scripture about Gideon because he fit the theme of someone who had experienced a pause in God’s work in Israel and God invited him to look into his heart to know what he wanted. I realized that this Scripture had much more to say to me than I would have guessed.
Gideon’s response to the LORD’s greeting was,
“Please, my lord, if the LORD (Yahweh) is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian” (Judges 6:13).
There it was. Yahweh greeted Gideon and paused. Gideon knew immediately what was in his heart. It is the cry of so many people when God’s pauses are WAY… TOO… LONG!!! And when God drew this out of Gideon’s heart (which is feeling SO SIMILAR to what Jesus was doing with the two men on the road to Emmaus), God could begin telling him the divine plan and how Gideon would join God in his work.
For me, this is one of the most gracious smacks upside the head (no, not really, but that’s what I think I need so often!) to get me to concentrate and look where the Holy Spirit is pointing. The divine pauses are often what I have made a destination but God is turning into an open door. Am I okay with Jesus moving on down the road while I get back to my normal? Or does my heart burn to know how I can know the Triune God better than I have ever known him/them before?
Today, I repent for so easily losing heart and feeling sorry for myself. God has paused long enough for me to see I hate doing things my way, and he has renewed my hope that he will continue doing in my life what he did in the lives of those two men on the road to Emmaus, and Gideon in a winepress, and two pairs of brothers on a lakeshore mending their nets, and…
Well, you get the picture. How have you felt God pause his work in your life so that you have struggled to know why you’re not experiencing things you thought he promised? Can you see that he is just waiting to see what you want to do when it looks like he’s carrying on without you?
© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
1 Inside Out, Larry Crabb, The Navigators; 25th Anniversary ed. edition (June 5 2013)