I could hear the rumble of voices as I walked down the corridor. The room held more people than expected. My palms were sweaty and my heart was racing.
The church elders scrambled, pulling chairs in from other rooms. They had not expected so many would attend a meeting on the roles of men and women in the church. But I did. I had been in conversations about this topic for years. I anticipated the temperature of the room.
I searched for a friendly face. I carried my Bible and copious notes. My husband moved beside me through the crowd of church members we had known for decades. I spotted a friend, a woman in the Bible study I taught, and made my way toward her, grateful. I didn’t realize until I sat down that I had placed myself at the very front of the room, with nothing between me and the teaching elders but open air and everything I had spent years studying.
I was nervous. I was anxious. Somewhere beneath both of those things, I knew what was coming. I knew, not arrogantly, but with sorrow. I had studied this topic for years and I knew my beloved church, which completely limited women’s roles in church leadership. I knew exactly the arguments that they would use for limiting women’s roles.
And they came as I expected. Word for word, almost.
Years earlier God called me to study women’s participation in church leadership. I began my studies assuming that the limits on women’s leadership which I had been taught were settled biblical truth. After years of study, prayer, and wrestling with Scripture, my convictions changed. But I came to that new understanding grieving, because I knew it was not what my beloved church taught and practiced, and I knew that there could be a cost to my scholarship.
During the meeting I understood why, months earlier, my closest friend had said to me, “You must share your convictions that God has shown you through your study of Scripture. You have a master’s degree in biblical studies and more than that, you have been studying this for nearly ten years. You must be obedient to the gifts and the calling God has given you.”
Let me tell you, sometimes obedience stinks.
In that fateful meeting, the church elders revealed that after careful study, they had concluded that the Bible does allow women to serve as deacons. However, because our church constitution does not allow women to serve as deacons, there would continue to be no women deacons in our church. For a church to acknowledge that Scripture permits women to serve in that capacity, yet continue to keep women from doing so, set a dangerous precedent. The Bible was secondary to the church’s constitution.
And I pointed that out.
Two days later, very quietly but very clearly, the Lord said to me, “Shake the dust off your shoes, and go.” I heard it through my car radio, a speaker expounding that very passage. Initially, I thought, God could not possibly mean leave this church; for three years He had consistently said to me, “The victory is staying in the battle.” I nearly dismissed it as coincidence.
But the very next morning, at a completely different hour, I got into my car and the same message was playing at the exact same moment in the text. Coincidence doesn’t repeat itself that precisely. The Lord had my attention. I remembered that Paul and Barnabas had done this very thing: left Antioch, shaking the dust from their feet, moving on to carry the gospel elsewhere. They were simply living what Jesus taught (Matt. 10:14; Acts 13:51).
Was God really telling me it was time to leave? I had deep roots, precious friendships, years of service teaching Bible study in our church of nearly thirty-five years. I prayed for clarity and confirmation.
Very soon after, I found a forgotten note I had written months before in my journal: Briane, God gave Hezekiah fifteen extra years of life, and he squandered them. Do not squander the time you have left after this diagnosis.
Six months earlier I had received a severe heart failure diagnosis.
I had assumed I would live out my remaining years, and ultimately have my funeral, in this church. The community God was directing me to leave had held me through things I could not have survived alone: two breast cancer diagnoses, the death of my father, and the loss of our six-year-old grandson Aven in 2021. These were the people who showed up, who sat with me, who prayed over me.
And yet.
And yet, I could not risk disobedience. I loved my church passionately. But Jesus’ words were clear: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15, emphasis mine). It was time to obey.
I need church like a fish needs water, so I began praying for guidance. Within two weeks of God’s direction to leave, I met with a young woman who is an executive pastor at another local church.
I am a writer, but I still have trouble finding words to describe that meeting. This young woman and I connected immediately. It was a joy-filled, life-giving, God-breathed answered prayer. Our time together truly glorified God and His purposes. At the conclusion of the meeting, this sweet young woman asked if I would consider mentoring her. I fought back tears of joy at her request.
How kind and loving of God to call me out of a place I loved so much and immediately call me into something so personal, so life-giving. I felt His presence, His hand, His purpose, His love, so overwhelmingly that morning. Isaiah’s words came to mind: “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isa 43:19a, emphasis mine).
Over the coming weeks the Lord confirmed in multiple ways that this was to be our new church home. We knew almost no one there, and yet because God goes with us, we were not alone. He brought us into a small group to begin building community again. My husband connected with the senior pastor, a fellow golfer, and they are starting to have good conversations and plan some rounds of golf. God has been so gracious, so merciful. He has given us joy in a time of loss.
But this is what I did not fully understand until I was on the other side of my yes: obedience doesn’t just produce joy. It produces growth. As I reluctantly left a church in which my own ministry was limited, something unexpected happened. God’s calling on my life as a Bible teacher and speaker became clearer. Opportunities I had not anticipated began to open. The obedience that initially felt like loss removed a ceiling I had not fully recognized was there. I was never going to step fully into what God had purposed for my life while remaining in a place where I could not fully pursue what I believed God was He calling me to do. Obedience was not just necessary for joy. It was necessary for growth.
Can I ask you something directly? What has God been saying to you or calling you to do, that you have nearly dismissed as coincidence? Perhaps it’s a conversation that you have been avoiding or a calling that you fear saying “yes” to because you can already count the cost.
God has your attention. The question is not whether He is speaking. The question is whether obedient love will be your response. Obedience doesn’t require the absence of fear. It only requires that love be stronger.
Here is the lesson God is teaching me in this journey: obedience rarely announces itself as joy. It usually looks more like sweaty palms, a racing heart, the anxious search for a friendly face.
But Jesus never said obedience would be painless. He promised it would be fruitful. “These things I have spoken to you,” He said, “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).
Christ’s own obedience cost something immeasurable. He is our model and our motivation. Jesus, “for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2). But oh, the outcome of His obedience! We who place our faith in Him are forever changed because He said, “Yes.”
That joy of obedience is not waiting on the other side of “easy.” It is waiting on the other side of “yes.”
Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank You for Your faithfulness through every season of change and every costly yes. Give us the courage to be obedient even when obedience has a price. Remind us that on the other side of our yes to You is joy—deep, full, and lasting. Teach us to listen for Your voice and follow. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
