Along the Way: Where It All Begins

by

Oboedire | November 22, 2025 

Oboedire is an online community (WordPress and Substack) of about 1,000 subscribers (with about that many more occasional visitors) who are variously engaged in the formation of faith. As the word oboedire implies, we seek to be attentive to God with the intention to enact what we see and hear. Working my way through scripture recently, I saw this in a particular way.

          –God created everyone and everything (Genesis 1:1)

          –God continued to speak in many ways (Hebrews 1:1)

          –This Word became flesh in Jesus (John 1:14)

          –God poured out the Spirit on all flesh (Acts 2:17)

          –God continues to do new things; we are in another time of awakening (Isaiah 43:19)

          –God will gather up all things in heaven and earth through Christ (Ephesians 1:9-10)

The pattern is clear: all things begin and end in the work of God.

Our task is to respond. The response is summed up in the word discernment—that is having eyes to see and ears to hear (Mark 8:18) in ways that move us to be explorers who ask, seek, and knock (Matthew 7:7-8). Jesus enjoined this pattern in his sermon on the mount.

It is the pattern of discerning responsiveness. It occurs as we are formed to become mystic-prophets. Mystics who have eyes and ears to see and hear God, and then prophets who declare what we have seen and heard.

There are no formulas or quick-fix programs. But there is a principle running through formative pattern in the Bible:

revelation + response = growth.

This is at the heart of the factory reset that I wrote about on October 2nd. We are called to be an attentive people. The question that followed God’s new-thing declaration in Isaiah 43:19 was, ‘Do you see it?” That’s our response to the revelation: seeing it, and then acting on what we see

There are about 400,000 congregations in the United States. What if each one established a ministry zone and asked within it, “What do we see God doing here?” The missiological coverage area would be immense. Of course we would continue supporting ministries outside the zone. That’s part of our stewardship as Christians connected with each other. But we would take responsibility for responding to God’s revelation in our zone.

Frank Laubach included in his morning prayer this question, “God, what are you doing in the world today that I can help you with?” That’s the question mystic-prophets ask. We see, as Saint Francis put it, ‘God is doing cartwheels in creation,” and then we pray as he did, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”

When we recognize that it all begins with God, we will move to discerning what God is already doing in our neck of the woods. Discernment will lead to discoveries that will ignite the flame of love in the design and deployment of ministries done in Jesus’ name—that is, done in response to his message and in keeping with his manner.