#69: Discernment: The Fog, The Face, and The Fork

#69: Discernment: The Fog, the Face, and the Fork

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

AUDIO CLIPS: Love Thy Neighborhood… Discipleship and missions for modern times.

ANNA TRAN: Alright, Jesse, so we obviously love stories here on the LTN Podcast. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, of course. Yes. 

ANNA TRAN: Okay. Here is a little story for you. It’s actually a riddle. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, okay. Okay. 

ANNA TRAN: Okay. Here it goes. A traveler comes to a split in the road, which leads to two villages. In one village, the people always tell lies. And in the other village, the people always tell the truth. So the traveler needs to do business in the village where everyone tells the truth. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, that seems like a better place to do business. Yeah.

ANNA TRAN: Makes sense. So a man from one village is standing in the middle of the split, but there’s no indication of which village he’s from. The traveler approaches the man and asks him one question. From the village man’s response, the traveler knows which road to take. So what did the traveler ask? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, okay, let me think about it. So if he just said, “Which way should I go?” that’s, that’s not gonna work because then the liar would say the opposite, and so he would end up at the liars’ village. 

ANNA TRAN: Mm-hmm. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Um, hold on. He would ask, “Which village are you from?” because if he’s a liar, he’s going to point to the truth village and if he’s a truth teller, he’ll also point to the truth village. So either way, the traveler will end up with the truth village. 

ANNA TRAN: Alright, you got it. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh my gosh, I feel awesome. 

ANNA TRAN: Gold star.

JESSE EUBANKS: Let’s wrap it up. 

ANNA TRAN: Alright. Yeah, I like this riddle because, you know, sometimes this is what our experience of discerning God’s will can feel like – like a strange riddle where, you know, one choice leads to abundant life with God and the other seems to lead to certain doom. You know, choose wisely, and you’ll be walking with Jesus. Choose poorly, and you’ll end up in a village of liars.

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JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks. 

ANNA TRAN: And I’m Anna Tran. Today’s episode – “Discernment: The Fog, the Face, and the Fork.” We have three stories about people who have decisions to make and their attempts to discern the will of God. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Welcome to our corner of the urban universe.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” But I think like the truth is that, you know, the path that we’re supposed to follow rarely actually feels straight. It feels more like a long, winding journey through unknown lands and dangers with plenty of crooked steps along the way. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, well, I don’t think that this verse is promising any easy or direct path. You know, what it is saying is that if you trust God, he will give you what you need moment by moment to follow him. But actually I really like this image of a journey. So I think today we should go on a little quest. What do you think about that? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, I like this. 

ANNA TRAN: I thought you would. 

JESSE EUBANKS: What are we gonna do? 

ANNA TRAN: So, like any good mythical quest, we will face a series of challenges. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh my gosh. What challenges are we gonna face? 

ANNA TRAN: Today, we have The Fog, The Face, and The Fork.

JESSE EUBANKS: The Fog, The Face, and The Fork. What is – what does that mean? 

ANNA TRAN: So you have to wait and see. These are gonna come to us in the form of three stories.

JESSE EUBANKS: Alright, well then what’s our first story? 

ANNA TRAN: Okay, so I talked to a man named –

ROB SCHETTLER: Rob Schettler. 

ANNA TRAN: And something very true about Rob is that Rob is a people person. Throughout his life, Rob has often pursued work that is all about interacting with and helping people. In his early thirties, he finished his master’s degree in clinical pastoral education, but he found himself without many options for ministry jobs.

ROB SCHETTLER: And we were barely making ends meet really and so I had a couple part-time jobs and I really didn’t know what was next. I was really in despair. 

ANNA TRAN: One day, one of his school supervisors at the seminary told him about a different kind of job caring for people. 

ROB SCHETTLER: She said, “Rob, there’s a hospice, um, down in eastern Kentucky that’s looking for a chaplain and wanted to know if you might be interested in this position.”

ANNA TRAN: Rob goes over for an interview, he gets the job, and they quickly sent him off to work.

ROB SCHETTLER: And basically they gave me a binder of about 70 or 80 patients in three counties and said, “Go visit ’em.”

ANNA TRAN: So Rob moved his family over to eastern Kentucky, and he dove right into work. 

ROB SCHETTLER: So I’m driving into the hollers of Kentucky, the hills, and getting lost all the time.

JESSE EUBANKS: Do, do you know what hollers are? 

ANNA TRAN: Kind of. 

JESSE EUBANKS: I mean, when you go into eastern Kentucky, they’re called the hollers, and it was like the folklores because people could holler and it would echo and echo and echo.

ANNA TRAN: Oh.

JESSE EUBANKS: And it, so it was these places, like, down between the hills. 

ANNA TRAN: Okay. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And so when you were in a holler, you’re in the middle of nowhere. 

ANNA TRAN: Mmm.

JESSE EUBANKS: It’s very remote.

ANNA TRAN: Out there, huh? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. 

ANNA TRAN: Huh. So this type of work was really life-giving for Rob. No two days were the same, and he was always interacting with people.

ROB SCHETTLER: There’s many times where I’d walk away from a visit and I would say to myself, “This is why I’m here.” Heart to heart conversations where someone would share something maybe they never shared with anybody. 

ANNA TRAN: And so as a hospice chaplain, Rob would visit people who only had a short amount of time to live because of their medical conditions.

ROB SCHETTLER: Their prognosis is six months or less, and there’s nothing else that can be done. 

ANNA TRAN: And like even with the sadness and the grief that, you know, obviously comes with imminent death, Rob experienced a lot of great depth and connection with his patients. 

ROB SCHETTLER: So when you meet a person that’s kind of looking at the end of their story, facades seem to come down really quick and they wanna talk about serious stuff for the most part. And so when you hear people with a fortitude to push through situations and you hear the details of those, those stories, it really moves you. You get lost in time. Time seems to sit still, and you just get caught up in the moment with them or hours with them. 

ANNA TRAN: And this type of work can be super taxing, you know. There were plenty of times along the way where Rob just questioned if he wanted to even continue chaplaincy.

ROB SCHETTLER: There was times when it’s like I would ask myself, you know, “How much longer can I keep doing this?” But I would sit with people and process that question.

ANNA TRAN: He would sit with trusted friends to talk about the wide breadth of struggles and joys in the work. 

ROB SCHETTLER: You know, there’s other beautiful situations that I experienced that would just fuel me, encourage me deeply. So you have both-and. 

ANNA TRAN: And so Rob – he continued to work as a chaplain, but then one day after 22 years of working in hospice care and hospital care, Rob encountered a tragedy that shook him. After decades of sitting up close with people with horrible pain and grief, on this occasion, the pain – it punctured through. So one day in 2019, Rob and his wife are driving through Oregon.

ROB SCHETTLER: For our anniversary, and we were driving back to Boise where my son lives. 

ANNA TRAN: They see red brake lights as the cars are decelerating in front of them. 

ROB SCHETTLER: We got stuck in traffic and we didn’t know what was the traffic was about, but it turned out it was an accident with a, a motorcyclist and a semi. So everybody was slowly passing this scene. The police were there, but there was nothing covered and it was horrific. It was, it was terrible, gruesome. 

ANNA TRAN: And at this point, his wife was driving, and the scene was so overwhelming for Rob he could not keep looking. 

ROB SCHETTLER: We were passing the scene, and I was like, “I gotta close my eyes.”

ANNA TRAN: And then, something really odd happened. 

ROB SCHETTLER: And when I closed my eyes, I saw myself running out of the ER at the hospital where I worked. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Hold on. What, what does he mean he saw him – he saw himself? Like he had like a vision? 

ANNA TRAN: Something like that. I’m not really sure if that’s the language he would use exactly, but essentially, yeah. When he closed his eyes, he suddenly had like a really vivid scene in his mind of him running out of the emergency room at the hospital where he worked.

ROB SCHETTLER: And I was like, “What?” I, I was shocked. Like, why am I seeing the hospital after just witnessing this two minutes ago?

ANNA TRAN: Rob and his wife – they keep driving, they pass the scene. Rob was really shaken. Even though he and his wife are still on vacation – you know, he’s supposed to be enjoying himself, it’s their anniversary – but he just couldn’t stop thinking specifically about the motorcyclist in the accident. 

ROB SCHETTLER: So I got on the internet, looked up the little town, and looked up the newspaper. And sure enough, his name was there. And from there I just went to see if I could find him on Facebook. 

ANNA TRAN: Rob kept hunting, he kept learning. 

ROB SCHETTLER: And there was pictures of him, there was pictures of his kids, pictures of his motorcycle. 

ANNA TRAN: He finds out this young man’s name, his age, and then he finds out the terrible reality of what he just witnessed.

ROB SCHETTLER: And he was a single father of two young boys going to work one morning. 

ANNA TRAN: So when Rob got home from vacation, he just couldn’t shake this unsettled feeling of heaviness. 

ROB SCHETTLER: I mean, that really spun me. I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t know what category to fit what I experienced and what was stirring in me together. Like there was a, a disconnect. I just couldn’t shake that.

JESSE EUBANKS: I, I really sympathize with this guy. 

ANNA TRAN: Mm-hmm. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Like he saw this horrific thing, and how do you make sense of it? “What does it mean for my life?” You know, it’s like super disorienting. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah. And like, when I think about discernment, I kind of think of this aspect of like a foggy field, you know? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, wait, wait, wait. The Fog. Like, this is, this is the thing you were talking about, the first challenge. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, you got it. Yeah, The Fog. This is the first challenge a lot of us face. You know, when we’re in The Fog, we are lost and disoriented. We aren’t really sure, you know, like where we are, where we’re supposed to go. We can tell that, you know, something is stirring, but we can’t figure out what it is.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like our, uh, options are limited or like we don’t see any options at all. I’m looking at, like, Rob’s situation. I mean, he’s got this unsettled feeling that he can’t explain. Uh, and, I mean, it sounds like the next step is gonna be like he’s gotta figure out what he’s gonna do with all the stuff he’s feeling.

ANNA TRAN: Right. And here’s the deal. Even though Rob has been a chaplain – you know, a guide for so many other people who have felt lost – suddenly he realizes that this time he’s the one who’s lost. He couldn’t figure out where his life was or what he’s supposed to do. And the truth is – this scared him. He needed someone to help him.

ROB SCHETTLER: I was like, “I need to talk to somebody.” I needed something spiritual to kind of understand, and so that’s why I sought out a spiritual director.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so hold on. You know, we throw around this term “spiritual direction.” I’ve heard it before. But like what is it exactly? It sounds mystical. People can hear that and go like, “I don’t know what that means. Is it a shaman? Like, what is that?” 

ANNA TRAN: Well, here’s how Rob puts it. 

ROB SCHETTLER: So spiritual direction is sitting with someone in a non-judgmental presence to be able to talk out the depths of someone’s faith – talking, listening, praying together to sense what the Lord’s doing in someone’s life in that moment. 

ANNA TRAN: So spiritual direction – it’s not a new thing. It’s rooted in Christian tradition, and it’s been around for centuries. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so I get the words that you are saying and the words that Rob is saying, but like what does that actually look like? 

ANNA TRAN: Okay, well, let me just walk you through how Rob experienced it. So within a couple months after seeing the accident, Rob met with his spiritual director. He would share whatever was on his heart, whatever was on his mind.

ROB SCHETTLER: Where I was at, what I was feeling, what I was trying to figure out, what did this mean, and he just listened to me. 

ANNA TRAN: The director would prompt Rob with questions to draw out more of his story. 

ROB SCHETTLER: He gave me such an open space to relax, listen, to pay attention to what I was feeling, pay attention to what I desired, and paid attention to things that I never recognized before, like what bothered me and what didn’t bother me, what, where was I feeling drawn to.

JESSE EUBANKS: Wait, hold on. Why is he sitting here and he’s like talking so much about his feelings and his emotions? Like I can just imagine a lot of people listening are going like, “That doesn’t matter. Like obedience matters, intellect matters, truth matters, emotions and feelings are irrelevant.” 

ANNA TRAN: Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of times when Christians think about discernment, we think about it in purely decision making terms. Like it’s really easy for us to forget about our emotions, our desires, but those are really important ingredients when we’re trying to discern things. You know, for Rob, before he could figure out what actionable decisions to make, he really needed to understand how God was speaking to his heart. So one day when Rob was sitting with a trusted friend, they were sharing about life and Rob was just sharing with him all the things he was processing with his spiritual director.

ROB SCHETTLER: I said, “You know, just this incident now has me stirring and longing for something different, but I don’t know what that is.” And he stopped me, and he said, “Rob, I’ve known you for several years now. You’ve been talking about this longing for a long time.” He says, “The incident, the, the accident just awakened you to there’s a deep longing going on inside you.” I mean, I said, “Are you sure?” (laughs) He’s like, “Yeah, Rob, I’m very positive. Yeah.”

ANNA TRAN: And now Rob is left with this one question – what is it exactly that he’s longing for? So Rob continues to meet with his spiritual director and talk with his friends and he eventually is able to articulate what he’s longing for and he names it. And what he names is this.

ROB SCHETTLER: That I wanted to step into something new. I’d been doing chaplaincy at that time for over 20 years, and all of it has been crisis-oriented or death-oriented or trauma-oriented for the most part. I was tired. I was tired of seeing suffering, I was tired of the crises, and I wanted to just experience a different context of care.

JESSE EUBANKS: I mean, gosh, like that, that’s what he’s getting at then. He’s saying that after almost 20 years, like he’s ready to turn over a new chapter, he’s ready to walk away. 

ANNA TRAN: Well maybe, but that’s the point. He doesn’t really know. You know, the first step was just to give himself permission to acknowledge that he was exhausted and that, you know, the years of working with people in crisis situations had just caught up with him. He was asking himself, you know, “Is this what I want for my life?”

ROB SCHETTLER: Like it was a daily conversation, like, “Am I supposed to step away from this?” Because I wasn’t sure if the longing was more I was just trying to get out of a tough situation, trying to escape or whatever, or was the longing like leading me somewhere? The thought of stepping away from a career was scary, so I started doing things differently. 

ANNA TRAN: So Rob tried changing up his daily work tasks to see if a different structure would help him, you know, feel differently about his work. He changed his schedule. He changed his focus at work, his approach. He even changed some of his strategies. He changed like everything he had in his power to change. 

ROB SCHETTLER: So I got to a point where it’s like I’ve changed up everything I know to change up.

ANNA TRAN: But the feeling just wouldn’t go away. So Rob finally just decides –

ROB SCHETTLER: “I’m just gonna start embracing the longing.” And so I really started saying, “Lord, are you inviting me to step away?”

ANNA TRAN: Rob starts specifically asking his friends and family about this, and they would ask him over and over –

ROB SCHETTLER: “So what are you gonna do then?” I’m like, “I don’t know.”

ANNA TRAN: But then there was a moment when Rob decided to shift the question he was asking. Instead of asking, “Should I step away from this job?” he asked –

ROB SCHETTLER: “Lord, will you just surprise me what you have for me?” Because I don’t wanna make nothing happen. I don’t want to try to figure it out and manipulate or make something happen for myself. And so I started just praying, “Lord, just surprise me.” And at that point I knew that resignation was, was coming. I just didn’t know when. 

ANNA TRAN: So he knew he couldn’t stay, but he also didn’t know where to go. You know, in his heart, he could feel one door beginning to close, but he had no sense that any other doors were opening at all. So, fast forward a little bit. At this point, it’s been about two years since Rob witnessed that motorcycle accident. He’s had countless conversations, prayers, sessions with his spiritual director, and it still felt like he was just treading water with no land in sight. But then, in August of 2022, Rob was finishing up one of his shifts at work.

ROB SCHETTLER: I remember being at the end of my day – and it was a great day, like everything just fell together at the hospital, like this was a good chaplain day, you know? And I sat in my office and I was just reflecting and talking to the Lord about it and I just got quiet and listened – kinda letting something surf – and I just felt like the Lord said, “Rob, when you resign, I want you to resign in a good place.” I thought, “Well, I’m in a good place now. Am I supposed to resign now?” And I actually said this out loud. I’m in my office, door’s shut, and just nothing, nothing happened, nothing. I was like, “Okay, well I guess it’s not today.”

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, that was not at all where I thought that story was going.

ANNA TRAN: I know, right? 

JESSE EUBANKS: I thought we were heading in a different direction there. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah. But the next day becomes a really important day. As he often does, Rob got up early. It was about 5:30 in the morning, and he presses “play” on the devotional podcast he listens to when suddenly this verse is what he hears.

AUDIO CLIP: “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” 

ANNA TRAN: And Rob is stunned. 

JESSE EUBANKS: I mean, yeah, like that verse is pretty – it’s a clear message.

ROB SCHETTLER: And I just remember hearing that and I was just like – jaw drop, like, oh my. 

ANNA TRAN: And so now Rob feels two competing forces raging in him. The first is a clear message from God to trust him. The second force is his own fear. “What if I fail? What am I even going to do with the rest of my life? How will I pay my bills?” And so he finishes up his devotion, he drives to work, and the whole drive he is having these two forces just competing inside of him. He gets there, he’s walking towards the hospital, and then he feels God’s voice silence all the others. And this thought enters his heart and mind with total clarity. 

ROB SCHETTLER: The Lord said to me, “Rob, you know I’m gonna take care of you, right?” And it was so profound to me that I stopped in front of the hospital and put my hands out and I started crying and I said, “Lord, I do know you’ll take care of me. Help me with my unbelief.”

ANNA TRAN: 20 minutes later, he walks into his supervisor’s office and he resigns.

ROB SCHETTLER: I walked out of her office, and I felt like 10,000 pounds was lifted off my shoulders. I was full of joy almost immediately, like excitement grabbed me. It was beautiful.

ANNA TRAN: On Rob’s last day at the hospital, with his office empty and car packed, he’s talking with one of his friends who’s another chaplain. 

ROB SCHETTLER: And this thought came to me, and it was the memory of that me running out the door that I saw two and a half years. And I looked over at my brother, and I says, “You know what? I’m gonna walk out the ER doors. I’m not gonna run.” I was walking towards the ER doors, he was walking with me, and we said our goodbyes. And I walked out the ER doors and I took about 10 steps and I put my hands in the air and I said, “Lord, thank you for this chapter of my life. I give it back to you. Do with it as you will, and lead me forward from this day.”

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so, I mean, did Rob ever find his next chapter? Like what did he end up doing?

ANNA TRAN: Today, Rob is actually a spiritual director himself. He was so deeply affected by this that he wanted to do the same thing for other people. He wanted to help other people discern how to hear God’s voice. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, yeah, yeah. It’s a little bit of like, uh, like he’s paying it forward a bit. And, and, like, I love this too because like if you look at Rob’s story, he didn’t make this decision impulsively. He didn’t make it without seeking the wisdom of others. You get a picture of patience, testing his inclinations, community involvement, but ultimately his big moment came when the word of God pierced his heart and confirmed what he sensed God was telling him to do. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, Rob’s story is, I think, just a really helpful picture of how all these ingredients work together.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so we conquered our first challenge, The Fog.

ANNA TRAN: The Fog. Yes. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So, what’s next? 

ANNA TRAN: Okay, so this next one is pretty crazy, so prepare yourself for The Face. We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. Jesse.

ANNA TRAN: Anna. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so today’s episode – “Discernment: The Fog, the Face, and the Fork.” So on the journey of discernment, we have conquered our first challenge, The Fog. 

ANNA TRAN: Yep. So now it’s time to face the next challenge – The Face. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Gonna face The Face. 

ANNA TRAN: Face The Face. That’s right. You know, sometimes in the Christian life you get a very strong and clear impression from God to do something that seems just ridiculous, like so strange, so off the beaten path that you wonder if you’re going crazy. And it’s at that moment when you have to decide – “Will I jump off the face of this cliff or stay safely where I am?” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, the face of a cliff. 

ANNA TRAN: That’s it.

JESSE EUBANKS: Ah, what, what is the story? 

ANNA TRAN: Okay, so this story actually comes from you and former producer Rachel Szabo. Ironically, it’s also from a man named Rob. Rob Vischer.

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh my gosh, yes. Uh, I still think about this story on a regular basis, like it is so bizarre and like mystical and beautiful. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah. When I was thinking of a story that really embodies what it looks like to jump off the face of a cliff and into the unknown just because God calls you to, this story was at the top of the list. So here’s former producer Rachel Szabo and Jesse telling Rob Vischer’s story.

JESSE EUBANKS: Rob Vischer’s in his late twenties. He’s a tall guy, really tall, with a voice and a laugh that immediately fills the room. And at the time he was living in Michigan, not too far from his parents actually, which meant that he would visit them from time to time, and that’s actually what he had done on this particular fall evening.

ROB VISCHER: I decided to leave and go home, and I lived about 10 minutes from my parents’ house, uh, in Jackson, Michigan at that time.

JESSE EUBANKS: They’d mostly been talking politics all night. They actually prayed for our country and our leaders right before Rob decided that he should head home. But as he left, something odd happened. 

ROB VISCHER: When I was going out, uh, in my parents’ driveway to the car, I opened the car door and it was almost like a tightness in my chest, or, like, maybe not a tightness, but a heaviness in my chest.

JESSE EUBANKS: That heaviness quickly turned into something Rob had never experienced before. 

ROB VISCHER: It was like this very strong knowing. It’s like a feeling, just this really strong urging. It’s like my whole body became a satellite that knew what was the next right thing to do. That’s all I can describe it as what I felt or what I had a knowing about. I, like, knew these words. I can’t even say hear, heard these words really, but I knew these words – “Go to 7-Eleven. There’s a guy named Jim there.” And I was like, “Wait, what?” 

RACHEL SZABO: Hold on. Okay, what is he talking about? Like his body is like a satellite? I, I don’t know. This sounds like some kind of new age-y weirdness going on.

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, you’re not the only one who found this, you know, a bit strange because Rob was also caught off guard.

ROB VISCHER: And I’m getting into my car and closing the door, and I’m like, “Am I crazy? ‘Go to 7-Eleven. There’s a guy named Jim there’? Uh, this is kinda weird.” (laughs) So I, I was kind of confused by it, honestly. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, you know, why would he all of a sudden feel the need to go to a convenience store and talk to a stranger? So at this point Rob quickly deduces that there are three possible explanations, the first one being that he’s just somehow made all of this up in his head. 

ROB VISCHER: My mind was going a million miles per hour. Like, why am I gonna go to 7-Eleven? I don’t even like 7-Eleven. Honestly, like, I, I don’t go there for anything. So it was just kind of outta character. 

JESSE EUBANKS: The truth is that Rob hadn’t even set foot in a 7-Eleven since he was a kid. And as far as somebody named Jim, he didn’t know anybody named Jim, except maybe the character on The Office. So the option that he was making this all up – it just didn’t seem to fit. The second option was that maybe this was from a more sinister source.

ROB VISCHER: Another filter was like, “Uh, would the devil tell me to do this?” (laughs) And even though I wasn’t like in that world at the time, I had grown up as a charismatic. So I was like, you know, there’s all that spiritual warfare stuff. And I’m like, “Is the devil telling me to do this?” And I quickly decided, “No, no, this isn’t the devil.” I mean, maybe if it was like, “Go to 7-Eleven and rob it.”

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so he decides that that option does not make sense either, which only for him left that third option. And that option was – this must be God. And if that is the case, if God is the one talking, what does this mean? 

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, so he’s in his parents’ driveway, it’s like, you know, eight o’clock at night or something, and now suddenly God is giving him directions? Like that also doesn’t make any sense. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, so Rob decided to test the idea.

ROB VISCHER: And I was like, “Lord, if this is you – I’m really not sure if it is – give me something else. Give me something to tell this guy. I don’t wanna just show up and say, ‘Hey, Jim,’ and not have anything to tell him.”

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, so did he get a response?

ROB VISCHER: I started getting these downloads in my heart. I, I don’t know how else to describe it. Um, the download was, “Give him hope for his finances.” And I was like, “Uh…”

JESSE EUBANKS: So Rob had asked a question, and he got an answer. So he decides, “Okay, let’s do it.”

ROB VISCHER: I was like, “I could be crazy, but I think I’m gonna roll with this and just see what happens because it’s never happened before. Why not just try it? If, you know, I see Jim, I will give him hope for his finances, whatever that means.”

JESSE EUBANKS: So here’s the thing – where Rob was, it was rural, a bit isolated. There was only one 7-Eleven in town, so at least he knew where he was going. So Rob’s in his car, and he just starts driving to 7-Eleven.

ROB VISCHER: And I created this whole scenario in my mind of, “I’m gonna go in, there’s gonna be a guy named Jim behind the counter, and I’m gonna see his name tag. I’m gonna talk to him and give him hope for his finances and then I’m gonna walk out and it’s all gonna be good.” I get to 7-Eleven, open my car door, and there’s no cars in the parking lot. And I’m like, “Ah, Jim, better be in there.” (laughs) I open the door to 7-Eleven, look at the front counter where, you know, all the lottery tickets are and the snack food, and it’s a girl. There’s nobody else in 7-Eleven. And, you know, I’m, I wouldn’t consider myself the smartest guy in the world, but I deduced pretty quickly that her name wasn’t Jim.

RACHEL SZABO: Wait, so he was wrong. Like, so it, it wasn’t God speaking to him because, like, there’s not a Jim at 7-Eleven. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, Rob wasn’t quite ready to conclude that, and he wasn’t ready to give up so easily. 

ROB VISCHER: So I went over to make sure that Jim wasn’t, like, hiding in a snack aisle somewhere. I went over to the hostess section, you know, where they have the Little Debbies, the Ho-Hos, the Ding-Dongs, the Twinkies. I just go up there, start grabbing snacks, and looking at the nutrition. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So I don’t know if you feel like this, but like when I’m in a gas station or a convenience store, I feel like there’s like a time limit to how much browsing you’re allowed to do, and like if you take too long, then it starts to look like you’re up to something shady. 

RACHEL SZABO: Oh yeah, definitely. Like there’s a corner store near my house and sometimes I’ll like go up and down the aisles multiple times looking for something and I totally feel like everyone’s watching me.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. You know, so Rob’s standing there, he’s browsing the snacks, and one minute turns into two, then five, then 10. Like he knows the girl at the counter is watching him because he’s the only person in the store, and he just starts feeling understandably really self-conscious. 

ROB VISCHER: I’m like, “Lord, I think I’ve missed it.”

JESSE EUBANKS: Either he misheard the instructions or he took too long to get there or it really wasn’t God after all.

RACHEL SZABO: Man, I don’t know why, but like that’s so disheartening. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. You know, so Rob decides to stop creeping out the girl at the counter and just go home. 

ROB VISCHER: Right as I decide that, I turn around – my back is to the door – and I turn around and in walks this guy.

JESSE EUBANKS: He’s an average middle-aged white guy. He’s probably late thirties to mid forties, just a very normal looking guy. He had on a mechanic shirt and a baseball hat, and so naturally Rob is looking at this mechanic shirt – and what is often on a mechanic shirt?

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, the name embroidered on it.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah.

RACHEL SZABO: Right. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And so Rob starts looking for a name.

ROB VISCHER: But the interesting thing about it was his name wasn’t on it. And that same knowing, that same feeling – I don’t, I don’t even still know how to describe it – but I knew that that was Jim. 

RACHEL SZABO: Stop. What? 

ROB VISCHER: I saw the words slash heard the words, “That’s Jim. Go up to him boldly and say, ‘Hey, your name’s Jim, isn’t it?'” So I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” 

RACHEL SZABO: Like literally he was about to leave. 

JESSE EUBANKS: I know, but if this is Jim, Rob feels like, “Okay, well I gotta go talk to him.”

ROB VISCHER: He grabs something really quick, like he’s, you know, he’s on a mission. I could tell because he grabs something really quick, goes to the register – it’s like a candy bar or something. So I go up to him, tap him on the shoulder, and say, “Hey, uh, your name’s Jim, isn’t it?” He turns around, and he goes, “Yeah, how’d you know?”

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, like how is Rob supposed to answer that question? “Well, you see, I know because I became a satellite and God spoke to me.”

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, that’s actually a version of exactly what he ends up saying. 

ROB VISCHER: Then I go, “Well, God sent me here to give you hope for your finances.” And he looked at me kind of weird, and he goes, “Well, that’s really strange, man. Right now I’m going through a personal bankruptcy.” And I’m like, “Oh my gosh, what the heck?”

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, like what are the odds, right? You know, there’s no way – like if you went to a random gas station and went up to somebody, how likely is it that you would number one, guess their name correctly, and number two, know something about their personal life?

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah. And number three, be in the store at the same time the person is in the store. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. But Rob realizes, like, that this is where the instructions stopped, like those were all the instructions he had gotten – “Go to 7-Eleven, talk to Jim about his finances.” So now Rob’s like, “Well, what should I do?” You know, it didn’t seem right to just be like, “Well, I guess that was it. I’ll see you later.”

ROB VISCHER: So I just kind of started talking to him about how much the Lord loves him and how much the Lord wants to give him wisdom in all things, including his finances. And I didn’t know what else to do, so there was an ATM there and I was like, “Hey man, um, I can go to the ATM right now and give you some money, you know, to help you out with your bankruptcy.” And he goes, “Nah, don’t worry about it, man. Don’t worry about it. I’m a believer. I love Jesus.” And he goes, “But I’ve never had anything like this happen.” I pray with him, just ask the Lord for wisdom for his finances and that he would be taken care of, and he goes, “Well, thanks, thanks, man.” He goes, “Now I know the miracles really do happen.” And he opened the door and left.

RACHEL SZABO: So, like, do we know – like, what happened to Jim? Did he, like, get out of bankruptcy? 

JESSE EUBANKS: No, we actually have no idea how that experience shaped Jim. We do know that it shaped Rob a lot. 

ROB VISCHER: I never saw Jim again, (laughs) and I definitely never went into 7-Eleven again. (laughs) I wasn’t looking for signs after that like, “Hey Lord, uh, who do you want me to talk to in 7-Eleven next week?” (laughs) I don’t necessarily think even that experience was just for Jim. I think me being able to engage in that was a gift. And if somebody says, “Hey, Rob, God isn’t real,” well, I would have to absolutely deny that experience, like, “Oh, well, my human connection just knew or the cosmos just knew.” I mean, I would have to make a God out of something else to explain it away.

JESSE EUBANKS: I think the truth is that Rob realizes that this is a mystical experience, like facts and figures and pure science, the tangible world, cannot explain what is happening. And so Rob knows like, “I will have to attribute this to something that is beyond the world around me.” You know, I think he just, he’s looking up at the stars and going like, “Someone out there is causing all of this to happen.” And, like, Rob’s not going throughout his whole life thinking that every single moment, you know, he’s gonna get these sort of mystical experiences. He knows that these kinds of moments – they aren’t the norm. 

ROB VISCHER: Looking back on that, as I’ve had more times of prayer, that’s kind of what it’s been like. It hasn’t been like, “Hey, Rob, go out and do something to change the world.” It’s been like, “Yeah, go take cookies to your neighbors.” It hasn’t been like this Red Sea moment or like “let my people go” or anything like that. It’s just kind of been like, “Do this act of really small compassion that nobody’s gonna notice.” I think that in hearing God speak, I don’t think it makes me mature. It just means that God was willing to use me.

ANNA TRAN: When we come back, we face our final challenge on our quest for discernment, and it’s probably one all of us have faced at one point in time. So prepare yourself for The Fork. Stay with us.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. Jesse Eubanks. 

ANNA TRAN: Anna Tran. Today’s episode – “Discernment: The Fog, the Face, and the Fork.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so I just wanna go ahead and, uh, take my official stab and guess at our final challenge. Uh, okay, so we have, uh, made our way through The Fog, which turned out to be like when people are very disoriented and confused about things. We have taken a look at The Face, which is the moment which we have to jump off the cliff because God’s asking us to do something crazy.

ANNA TRAN: Like a cliff face. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So now The Fork – I’m gonna guess it’s when we come to a moment in the road in which we have to choose – “Are we gonna go left? Are we gonna go right?” – and we have to make a decision. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, you got it because, you know, sometimes we’re presented with just a simple but endlessly confusing choice of two options. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Right, you know, like we’re standing at the fork in the road and we just have to decide like, “Am I gonna go left? Am I gonna go right? And then, you know, which path is it that God wants me to take?” 

ANNA TRAN: That’s right. And we’re going to face this challenge through the story of a woman named Sabrina Chan. So growing up, Sabrina went to church a lot. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Hong Kong, and she and her family straddled two different cultures. 

SABRINA CHAN: I went to two different churches. One of them was a mostly white church that we had grown up in, and then my parents had had us participating in the Chinese church on a lot of Sunday mornings and on Friday nights.

ANNA TRAN: And although she was steeped in different church cultures, Sabrina wasn’t fully engaged in a relationship with God. Faith in God to her felt more like, just like religious legalism. 

SABRINA CHAN: So I, I would show up to church. I mean, I, I had to go, but mentally and spiritually I was just checked out.

ANNA TRAN: So when she went off to college, she went as far away as she could, leaving Richmond, Virginia and landing in Houston, Texas. So after her first year of college, her parents were kind of worried about her faith. They knew that it wasn’t something Sabrina was engaged with. And so as a result –

SABRINA CHAN: I don’t suggest this to people, but they told me I have to go to this Christian camp over the summer, and honestly it was a pretty terrible camp.

ANNA TRAN: So this wasn’t your stereotypical fun and chipper type youth camp.

SABRINA CHAN: Well this was kind of a, a fundamentalist Christian apologetics kind of camp. 

ANNA TRAN: And Sabrina was very clear – this is not a camp she would endorse even now. Well, while she was at this camp, one of the very last nights –

SABRINA CHAN: There was a testimony time, and I thought, “Oh, I know exactly how this is gonna go.”

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh yeah, yeah, like I totally know the formula. You know, it’s the last big group time. Everybody’s bonded. Everybody’s had like a great time together. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, people might start crying ’cause they’re getting so worked up about leaving each other. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, cue Michael W. Smith’s “Friends.” 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah. People are giving their testimonies.

SABRINA CHAN: Kind of the traditional “I didn’t wanna come and now I’m so glad ’cause you’re all my best friends” kind of thing. 

ANNA TRAN: Okay, so Sabrina’s looking around and is seeing all of this young adult emotionalism, and she’s just skeptical, holding back. But then a young woman about the same age as her gets up and begins to share her testimony, talking about her own story and her own encounter with Jesus. And to Sabrina’s own shock, as she listens to this young woman, she feels something different begin to happen inside of her. She’s heard stories like this dozens of times before, but like this time it’s just hitting her differently. It’s like the image suddenly went from 2D to 3D in her heart. 

SABRINA CHAN: There’s more to it than the rules. And even if they’re saying all the things you expected them to say, there’s something deeper. There’s something deeper that these – that is here. So I, I felt like, “Oh, maybe a way to respond is like just to even pray and talk to somebody.” 

ANNA TRAN: So when Sabrina got back to college, she got to know some Christians on her campus. And when they would study the Bible together, it was totally different from the rules-based faith she was used to.

SABRINA CHAN: It was refreshing to sort of be able to ask questions and not necessarily have all the answers at the end of the time, to know that that could be an ongoing conversation, more open-ended, right? Like that really meant a lot to me. 

ANNA TRAN: And looking back on her experience, Sabrina definitely doesn’t blame her parents.

SABRINA CHAN: I think they were hoping I would come back to the faith and maybe this was the best tool they knew of, but I find it grace that the Holy Spirit used that space in my life. 

ANNA TRAN: And as time goes on, Sabrina is more engaged with the Christian fellowship on campus, and eventually she even steps into various leadership positions in the ministry.

SABRINA CHAN: I remember there was this one day I was walking to class I think – I studied electrical and computer engineering – and I was thinking about what was coming up that day and I was thinking about my classes, but I was like more excited about the different ministry things than I was about class. 

ANNA TRAN: And as she thought about it more, she started realizing something.

SABRINA CHAN: You know, what really makes me wanna get outta bed in the morning is seeing the ways God’s changing people’s lives.

ANNA TRAN: And this thought – it caught Sabrina’s attention. It caught her curiosity. 

SABRINA CHAN: And so that just started a, a spark of like, “Oh, I wonder – maybe that means something, maybe it doesn’t.” I was like, “Well, I’ll just, I’ll just pay attention to that.” I didn’t feel like that meant something right then necessarily. 

ANNA TRAN: And as it turns out, that thought was pretty significant because as Sabrina begins looking ahead into her senior year, she begins to seriously consider going into full-time ministry as a career. But – here’s the catch. In addition to her own questions about whether God wanted her to do it or not, there were two additional barriers as well. First, she had majored in electrical computer engineering, a career that promised to pay very well. And second, she felt her parents deserved to have input in her decision. On one weekend, her parents came for a visit. 

SABRINA CHAN: They came my senior year, and I remember they came to visit our Friday night meeting with me to sort of see what the fellowship was like. 

ANNA TRAN: Her parents were able to see her college ministry firsthand, meet her friends, and Sabrina was able to express –

SABRINA CHAN: “This is something I, I’m interested in, I wanna consider,” but they still expressed reluctance. It wasn’t clear to me exactly why, but then that letter came in the mail and that was more clear about what they were thinking. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Whoa, that sounds ominous. A letter in the mail.

ANNA TRAN: Right. From your parents. 

SABRINA CHAN: Dad wrote me a letter. We had email back then, but he still wanted to write, write a letter. I think it was typed. But he said, you know, “I hope that you could, you know, marry a man who’s also in ministry and then y’all could minister together. Like maybe he could be a pastor,” and like all this stuff. 

ANNA TRAN: And in later conversations they expressed more clearly –

SABRINA CHAN: They were pretty opposed to it. I think they were concerned. Am I just trying to extend the college experience and not move on as an adult? I think they wanted to make sure that I could establish myself, and a lot of campus ministers or missionaries, you raise your own support. And so I think they were concerned about that.

ANNA TRAN: And all of this culminated in what essentially was a big fat “No” for Sabrina. 

SABRINA CHAN: Oh, I was mad. I was angry. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, you know. I had a number of friends who were planning to join staff, and I felt like it wasn’t fair, you know. This is something I’m really passionate about, and why do they get to do this, you know, and I don’t?

JESSE EUBANKS: Can we take a sidebar for a second? 

ANNA TRAN: Sure. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So, and this is, this is very much, this is a white male thing. I’m just baffled.

ANNA TRAN: Mmm.

JESSE EUBANKS: Like, my experience in this moment is like, I’m just like, I don’t understand. When I went into urban ministry like as, you know, a 19 year old, like I did not ask my parents for permission. I announced to them what I was going to do. So it’s just, it’s very foreign, like in my, in my life experience.

ANNA TRAN: Yeah. Mmm. Yeah, it’s interesting ’cause like I hear Sabrina’s story and I’m just like tracking with her.

JESSE EUBANKS: It’s fascinating. It’s almost like, uh, individualism versus sort of a communal view, you know? 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, collective cultures emphasize group desires and needs over the desires of each individual person. It’s like the relationships with the other people around you and how you’re connected to them is a core way of how you understand yourself, and this is pretty common in East Asian cultures and many other cultures around the world. So like in a way, Sabrina’s parents saying no to this decision – it’s like a part of herself is saying no to this decision as well. And this was very different compared to some of her friends who came from more individualistic cultures.

SABRINA CHAN: One of my white friends in college at the time – she was just a year ahead of me – she told me, you know, “Yeah, my parents told me, ‘Whatever makes you happy.'” I looked at her, and I thought, “Really? I really just thought that was on TV.” And that sounded so appealing ’cause I was like, “Ugh, I wish my parents felt that way.”

ANNA TRAN: Okay, so one day she meets with this guy. He’s actually the director of Asian American students at the national level of the ministry Sabrina’s a part of.

SABRINA CHAN: Paul Tokunaga is his name. He came to campus, and I remember we met up in the student center outside this late night eating place called Sammy’s. It was cold – I remember that, and it’s not often cold in Houston – and I just shared with him more about this letter and more about my hopes. 

ANNA TRAN: Paul was asking questions and reflecting back what he heard.

SABRINA CHAN: And towards the end of it, he was like, you know, “Just from listening to you talk, it sounds like you shouldn’t apply at this point because your parents aren’t necessarily at a, a no forever. They’re like no for now. It does sound like maybe going into an engineering job for a year or two might be a way to honor your parents.” I remember walking back to my dorm that night. You know, it was dark, it was cold, and I was just, ugh, sad.

ANNA TRAN: Paul’s response was not satisfying to Sabrina, but she knew that there was truth to what he said. 

SABRINA CHAN: It didn’t feel like God was saying, “You have to do this right now,” right? I did feel like I want to do this right now.

ANNA TRAN: And so Sabrina goes back to her dorm room, and she tries to process this. 

SABRINA CHAN: I remember writing in my journal about how I was so angry. I can totally picture it, like it was a VeggieTales journal and I’m just – I was writing to God, writing about how I’m so effing angry. When I think about lying on the floor of my dorm room and writing in that journal, it felt like everything. I, I didn’t feel like I could see that, that far.

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, like this is her world. But in her sadness and frustrations, she didn’t completely write God off, but she also didn’t necessarily have a strong sense of God’s guidance either. 

SABRINA CHAN: But I felt like my friends were hearing for me, you know, “God is with you.” Just that sense, which meant a lot because, you know, I was angry at God and at the same time I was still engaging with God and I felt like, “Okay, well God’s still with me. I’m, I can still tell God how I feel.” 

ANNA TRAN: After she graduates, she applies and lands an engineering job in Houston while still living close to the college. She did the nine to five while also volunteering for the campus ministry. 

SABRINA CHAN: You know, one or two days a week I was using my lunch break to drive over to campus and meet with a student leader for discipleship, and one evening a week I was helping to lead a Mark Bible study.

ANNA TRAN: And then a few months pass, then six months, then a year. Week after week, you know, Sabrina works as an engineer and at the same time she’s volunteering at the campus ministry in her free time and she still feels unsettled about it all. But her parents’ outlook hasn’t shifted. Nothing is changing. And she begins to accept, “Hey, I guess this is my new life.” But then one day after about a year and a half into her engineering job, Sabrina actually decides to ask her parents about going into full-time ministry again. And they said –

SABRINA CHAN: “You know, we’re not opposed anymore. We’re not necessarily supportive, but we don’t think we can say, ‘No, you shouldn’t do this.'” 

ANNA TRAN: And so, you know, Sabrina is really glad to hear this news, and she goes for it. But then she finds out that the only ministry position available to her would require her to move to a brand new city. So Sabrina ends up asking a couple of her friends to pray and fast with her. One day they were all hanging out together at someone’s apartment.

SABRINA CHAN: I really wanted clarity, and I remember that day telling God like, “I just want skywriting. I would just wanna step outside right now from this, some, whoever’s apartment we’re in and, and see in the sky like, ‘Sabrina, move to Austin. Sabrina, move to Austin. Move to Austin. Move to Austin. Move to Austin. Move to Austin.'” And as we prayed more, I felt this sense that God was saying, “I could do skywriting, like that’s no big deal. But I know you. What’s more important here is, is your relationship with me, and I know you. If I did skywriting, when things get hard, you’ll blame me. You’ll be angry that I told you you had to do this.” And I was like, “Oh, I guess that’s kind of true.” So I was like, “Okay, God. So I hear that. You’re probably right. I mean, you are God. Um, then how should I pray?” And I felt like God was saying, “Well pray for enough to step out in a direction.” And I thought, “Okay, well I don’t know what that means exactly, but I’ll, I’ll pray for that.”

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh my gosh. So, like, God basically, like, put the decision back on Sabrina and said like, “You gotta pick one.”

ANNA TRAN: Yeah. It seemed like God wanted her to dig a little bit deeper and discern her own desires, and that would begin with not just standing at the fork in the road forever, but by choosing a path and taking a few steps forward. So, as Sabrina’s trying to decide, she’s sharing her dilemma with her friends, asking them to pray. And one of those friends ends up telling her – 

SABRINA CHAN: “Sabrina, you’ve been spending your lunch breaks, a couple of lunch breaks a week, and one evening a week volunteering on campus. Like you are still really passionate about this.”

ANNA TRAN: And that’s when Sabrina realizes that there’s something else at work under all of this. I mean, most of the barriers have now been removed. You know, her parents have given her their blessing. Her friends have given them their blessings. God has given her his blessing. And now with all of these hurdles removed and resolved, Sabrina realizes that the biggest thing that’s been holding her back is actually something else, something that was hiding behind all of these other things.

SABRINA CHAN: I’m scared. I’m scared to leave Houston. I’m scared to leave the community I’ve already built again and scared to start over. Like I don’t have the roadmap. You know, I don’t know what it’ll look like to move to Austin. I don’t know who I’ll live with. I don’t know what church I would be a part of. I don’t know if I’m gonna be good at this job. (laughs) But I do have enough to step out in a direction.

ANNA TRAN: And so she makes a decision. She stopped standing at the fork. She chose a direction and journeyed onward. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So which path did she take? 

ANNA TRAN: She left Houston. She quit her job, packed up all of her belongings, and moved to Austin, Texas, and now she’s been doing full-time campus ministry for over 20 years.

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh my gosh. That is so great. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, and what’s fascinating is that looking back on this decision, Sabrina said she realizes now that this process of discernment wasn’t about what she thought it was about. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Wait, wait, what do you, what do you mean? What was it about then? 

ANNA TRAN: Well, she thought that it was all about discerning her career and her calling. And yes, that was definitely part of it, but she said that the bigger lesson from God was actually what he was telling her about their relationship.

SABRINA CHAN: I felt like, “Oh, God does know me,” and that’s what I needed to sort of, yeah, step out and own my decision too. I do feel like God was leading and inviting me that way.

ANNA TRAN: Okay. Well, we have conquered the three challenges of our journey, right? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. 

ANNA TRAN: We had – you remember, The Fog? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. We confronted The Fog, The Face.

ANNA TRAN: Yep. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And The Fork. 

ANNA TRAN: The Fork. And I think it’s safe to say that in each of these stories there are a few ingredients that come up just over and over again, like trusting in Jesus, seeking counsel from your community, having authentic prayers, you know, the wisdom of Scripture, confronting your fears, patience, testing your instincts.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, you know, it makes me think of this story that Brennan Manning told about, uh, this time that the famous ethicist John Kavanaugh went to go visit, uh, Mother Teresa in Calcutta. And he went there because he was trying to figure out, “What am I gonna do with the rest of my life?” Like he was trying to discern, “What is it that I’m called to?” And so he goes to Mother Teresa, and he says, “Hey, will you pray for me?” And Mother Teresa says, “What do you want me to pray for?” And Kavanaugh replies, “Clarity. Pray that I have clarity.” Mother Teresa actually says, “No, I’m not gonna do that. Clarity is the last thing that you’re clinging to and that you must let go of.” And Kavanaugh looks at her and says, “But you seem like you always have clarity, clarity about what you’re supposed to do and what’s next.” And Mother Teresa starts laughing, and she says, “I have never had clarity. What I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

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JESSE EUBANKS: If you benefited at all from this podcast, please help us out by leaving a review wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. Your review will help other people discover our show.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Special thanks to our interviewees today – Rob Schettler, Rob Vischer, and Sabrina Chan. If you’re interested in getting in touch with Rob Schettler for your own spiritual direction, you can learn more about his work in the show notes below. Also, if you’d like to know more about Sabrina Chan’s ministry and the book that she co-wrote about her own journey, you can learn more about that in the show notes as well.

ANNA TRAN: Our senior producer and host is Jesse Eubanks. 

JESSE EUBANKS: This episode was produced and edited by Anna Tran, who recently was taking note of the rising gas prices.

SABRINA CHAN: Writing about how I’m so effing angry.

JESSE EUBANKS: Additional story production from Rachel Szabo. Music for this episode comes from Blue Dot Sessions, Lee Rosevere, and Murphy DX.

ANNA TRAN: If you want a hands-on experience of missions in our modern times, come serve with Love Thy Neighborhood. We offer urban missions programs for young adults ages 18 to 30. Bring social change with the gospel by working with an innovative nonprofit and serving your urban neighbors. Experience community like never before as you live and do ministry with other Christian young adults. Grow in your faith by walking in the life and lifestyle of Jesus and being part of a vibrant, healthy church. Serve for a summer or a year. Learn more at lovethyneighborhood.org. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Which of these was a neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, “Go, and do likewise.”