A Voice Behind Me on the Track

He can name the junction. Most men who carry this can.

It was a Tuesday in a year he can date, and there were two things he could have done, and he prayed about it for about three weeks and got nothing he could point at, and in the end he chose the one that made sense and got on with it.

That was eleven years ago. The choice was not a disaster. It has been fine.

Here is what he has carried since, and he has never once said it out loud.

He believes he missed it.

Not the choice. The moment. He believes there was a window in those three weeks in which God was going to say something, and that he was too dull or too busy or too impatient to be standing in the right place when it came, and that the whole of the eleven years since has been a man walking a track he chose himself while a different track ran somewhere off to the left.

He is not tormented by it. That would be easier to spot. It sits underneath, quietly, and it comes up at odd hours, and its effect is not grief. Its effect is that he has never seriously asked God for direction again, because a man who missed it once does not put himself in that position twice.

The voice comes from behind

There is a line in Isaiah that describes guidance, and everybody who quotes it skips the most surprising word in it.

And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.Isaiah 30:21

Behind thee.

Not in front. Not at the junction, held up like a sign for a person deciding which way to go. Behind, which is where a voice comes from when somebody has already set off and is already walking.

Think about what that means for the geometry of the whole thing. In that verse the person is moving before the direction arrives. They have made a choice, taken a track, and the correction, or the confirmation, reaches them from behind while they walk.

Which is exactly the opposite of the arrangement you have been grieving for eleven years. You have believed the voice belonged at the fork and that you were not in position for it. Isaiah puts it on the track afterwards.

You are walking within earshot right now, and the voice in that promise arrives after the choice rather than before it. That is what the word actually says, not a consolation I am offering you, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that plain to a man eleven years down a track.

Name the eleven years before anything lifts

Now let me stop, because I am not going to hurry a man past this to get to a good line.

Something real happened in those three weeks. You asked, sincerely, for three weeks, and heard nothing you could point at, and then had to choose anyway with no more information than you had at the start. That is a genuinely hard thing and nobody has ever acknowledged it to you, because you never told anybody.

And the cost since has not been the track. The track has been fine. The cost is that you stopped asking, and eleven years of not asking is a long time for a man to walk without ever once putting a question down in front of God.

That is not disobedience. That is a man protecting himself from a silence he took personally.

And the silence in those three weeks was never a verdict on you. Scripture never once treats hearing nothing as a fault in the one listening, and the Holy Spirit has not withdrawn from a man because a Tuesday went quiet.

The turnings are still ahead

Here is the part I most want you to have, and it is in the second half of the verse.

When ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.

That is not describing one fork in a life. It is describing an ongoing thing: a person walking, turning, being spoken to about the turning, over and over, all the way along.

There are turnings ahead of you. There are turnings this year. And the promise attached to them is a voice from behind, on the track, while you are already moving.

You are able to hear direction again, and eleven years of not asking has not disqualified you from the next turning. He promised a word behind you at the right hand and at the left, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that voice audible to a man who thought he had used up his chance.