A path for following God's directives

You followed God.
So how did you get off track?

He gave you a word. An assignment, a mission, a thing only you were sent to do — write the book, start the business, go back to school, build the ministry, warn the one, help the one. You understood it. You said yes. You followed Him.

And then, somehow, you found yourself off track with His plan, and you cannot understand how you got there. You go to God. You go to church. You pray, you read your Bible, you do all the things you are supposed to do. He set you on a mission — and still, somewhere along the way, you started listening to someone else's orders, someone else's suggestions, and not His. How does that happen?

It happens in a pattern. And the pattern has a name, a mechanism, and a way back.

There is a man in Scripture who did the exact thing.

God sent the man of God from Judah to Bethel with a directive — deliver the word, and do not stop, do not eat, do not drink, and do not return the way you came. And he obeyed. Beautifully. He delivered a hard word to a wicked king, he watched God split the altar and wither the king's own hand and then restore it, and he refused the king's reward, because the Lord had told him no. He was following God's directives the whole way.

Then he sat down under an oak tree. And an old prophet found him there and said: I am a prophet too, and an angel told me you should come home with me and eat. It was a lie. But it wore the costume of someone like him, and he believed that second voice over the first one God had already given him. While they sat at the table, the word of the Lord came — you defiled the word, you did not keep the command. He did the one thing God told him not to do, and it cost him his life.

Catch this: his failure was never that he didn't obey. He obeyed all the way to the last mile. He got caught up one step from finished. And that is closer to home than we want it to be — because most of us don't realize the moment we go off course.

What pulls you off course
We come off course three ways — and the man of God came off course all three. Left alone, every one of them leads to the same place.

  • Deception.Deception comes from the father of lies. It uses people — sometimes people who want to harm your calling, sometimes people who don't even know they're being used. And it is crafty: it will carry a lie inside part of the truth. The man may truly have been a prophet — he still lied. Deception also creeps in when someone knows a little too much of your business and twists what you told them to derail you. Sometimes what God said is between you and Him.
  • Distraction.Distraction is the thief of progress. The man of God only sat down under a tree — and lost focus of the mission to get home. It robs you of the time and the purpose God set aside for you. Watch a baby crawl toward her mother, then veer off for a toy on the floor, and never reach the arms she was headed for. Distraction looks harmless. It can also lead you down the wrong road, the wrong path, the wrong assignment.
  • Doubt.What voice is greater in your ear — God's, the enemy's, or your own? He told you clearly. Then someone says the opposite, and now you doubt: because they're older, because you don't feel good enough, because so many others already do it, because you wonder if the Lord really speaks to you at all. Sometimes the doubt is from the enemy — and sometimes it's your own voice drowning out what God already said. Since when is an angel's word higher than the Lord's? God is not the author of confusion.
where the three lead
Disobedience. Not rebellion, but a directive left unfinished. The man of God sat down.
  • Discernment.How do you know when someone is deceiving you, distracting you, sowing doubt — or when God is using them to tell you the truth? Discernment: knowing a thing through the power of the Holy Spirit. Test the spirits, says First John, to see whether they are of God. Faith was never meant to be spiritual naivety. Discernment can save you from pain, from stress, from death.
  • Devotion.Not the five or thirty minutes of reading you fit into a day. Devotion is loving God to the point that you do not want to disobey Him — consulting Him through the whole process, giving Him access to your next move. Its root is devote: to consecrate, to dedicate, to set apart. A devoted heart lets Him lead every portion of the assignment, all the way to its completion.
  • Development.To grow in the knowledge of God — and the proof of it is that you bear good fruit. Your assignments test you in order to develop you, and God hands you more as He sees you can carry it. It's like setting out to lose the weight and build the muscle: there is no two-day version. It takes a regimen, time, and dedication. So it is with growing in God.
  • Deeply Rooted.Rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith, so that no philosophy and no empty, smooth-talking deceit can pull you up. Being deeply rooted means you know His voice — My sheep hear My voice, Jesus said, and they do not follow another. This one is built of the other two: devotion and discernment.
  • Determination.Firmness of purpose. A made-up mind that moves in a fixed direction. When weariness comes — and it will — those who wait on the Lord renew their strength and rise on wings like eagles. You don't carry it alone; the Holy Spirit walks alongside you. So you forget what's behind, strain toward what's ahead, and press on. You can do all things through Him who strengthens you.

It comes down to finishing the assignment.

There is an assignment with your name on it, and somewhere inside it is a step you already know — the one you've been delaying, the place you should have been further along, where your own timing got derailed. The whole method bends toward one thing: that you do not stop one mile short. That you hear His voice over every other, refuse to sit down under the tree, and complete what He sent you to do.

Where you start depends on where you are.

If you don't yet know what's pulling you off course — start with the Pattern Assessment. In a few minutes it names the thing on the surface and points you to what's underneath it.

Take the Pattern Assessment

If you already know you're off track, and you are done sitting under the tree — let's talk. On a discovery call we'll name what knocked you off and the one step back onto your directive.

Book your discovery call
Everything here runs on one path — the Directives Method.
This is where you step onto it.