Last week, in “The Ultimate Shame: Europe! Here We Come! Part 5“, we saw how God can use things that we would consider “disastrous” to His glory, leaving us with the challenge to seek His glory through our trials!

God wasn’t finished speaking to me about this mohawk my son came home with…

As mentioned last week, two days before leaving for Europe, our youngest son, Darien, returned from a mission trip with a mohawk. The entire story, however, actually began 7 years earlier…

You see, this particular son had actually experienced a “Samuel” calling on his life when he was 7 years old. His immediate response to this visit from God was one of awe and joy. As the years went by, however, his excitement for ministry waned as his interest in horses grew. Soon his only goal in life was to own a ranch and raise horses. At first he said he’d have his ranch near the ministry God called him to, and he’d raise horses and ride “on the side”. Even at his young age, however, he soon came to understand that he’s never be able to support a ranch on a minister’s salary, and besides, there simply wouldn’t be time for both; and there was no further mention of the calling on his life…

My wife and I spent a significant amount of time praying for him, but beyond that, it seemed like anything we said or did seemed to cement in his mind that he did not want to be in ministry and he did want to be a famous show jumper…

To this day we still don’t know what it was about the youth pastor’s invitation to go on this missions trip to a fly-in native reserve that caught Darien’s attention. We suspected it had something to do with the adventure of being away from home. Nonetheless, we sensed God’s hand on the trip. We not only allowed him to go, be we also planned our Europe vacation around his missions trip dates. But then the child had the audacity to come home… with a mohawk! I’m not sure who I was the most angry at: My son for getting his hair cut, or the youth pastor who must have permitted it! That youth pastor knew we were leaving for Europe! He knew Darien couldn’t go to Europe like … that! What was he thinking?

The fact that my wife shaved off the mohawk the next day did little to appease me. It irked me beyond measure that this would have happened at all, and although my mom’s obvious delight in the whole story did help to soften the blow a bit, I just couldn’t come to terms with the fact that he would do such a thing to me!

There was a certain glow about my son, but I was still so irritated by the mohawk incident that I didn’t initially pay any attention to it. It wasn’t until we were back home and the memory of that awful haircut had faded a little that I finally began to understand. The trip to northern Canada had apparently done something to light the old fire in Darien. Suddenly he was once again gung-ho to be in ministry!

That passion never again left him, and today, as this is being written, he is the lead pastor of a growing church in Western Canada….

God had indeed planned something wonderful with that missions trip; but I couldn’t see it. My eyes were so blinded by the mohawk incident that I couldn’t even comprehend the miracle God had done…

This is such a powerful lesson to me. Sometimes we pray for things and we don’t see the answer … not because God hasn’t answered, but because we’ve become distracted and we can’t recognize the answer! Perhaps we would do better to follow Habakkak’s example: “I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.” (Habakkuk 2:1 ESV). When Habakkuk comes to God with a concern, he stands out on a watchpost by the watch town and waits for God’s answer! Hadn’t I brought God my concern about how Darien no longer wanted to be in ministry? If I had been watching and waiting for God’s reply, the mohawk wouldn’t have hidden God’s miracle from me!

What have you been praying for? Don’t forget to vigilantly watch for God’s reply!

Inspired by Rob Chaffart
Founder, Answers2Prayer ministries

(To access the entire “Europe Here We Come” devotional series, please click here!)