Scratching the itch

If you have ever experienced that little tickle in the back of your throat that forces you to cough almost incessantly, then you know what the itch is all about.  Or if you have ever had poison oak anywhere on your body, you know how hard it is to harness that almost uncontrollable urge to scratch until you draw blood.  The itch can drive you crazy and can consume your thoughts.  It can also cause you to make rash decisions, leading to even worse choices.  The itch can be pretty powerful.

But is the itch always a bad thing?

What happens when our hearts and minds become consumed by the desire to be daring for God?  How about when the Lord places a people group on your heart and you just can't help but pray for them and seek ways to minister to their needs, both spiritual and physical, even to the point of traveling halfway across the world to serve them?  Or maybe you sense that God is leading you to do something radical like moving your family to a new land so that you can immerse yourself in a culture that is desperately in need of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Aren't those the kinds of itches that we want to scratch?

While that answer may be obvious, the means by which you arrive there probably are not.  Many of us have wrestled with decisions in our lives, anguishing over whether or not we were acting within God's will and even struggling with whether or not these desires are from God at all or are products of our own flesh and selfish desires.  Is there a cut-and-dry method to gain the discernment that we need, something like a 5-step process to knowing whether or not we need to scratch the itch that we are experiencing?  Isn't there an easy way to know?

I invite you to consider many of the examples in Scripture that God used to confirm the itch that He often gave His people:

• He gave Gideon a fleece (Judges 6:33-40)
• Balaam had a conversation with his donkey (Numbers 22:21-30)
• Peter was given a vision of a sheet and animals (Acts 10:9-16)
• Paul was led by the Spirit of Jesus and a vision from God to preach the gospel in Macedonia (Acts 16:6-10)

What do we learn from these examples about how to handle the itch (this is by no means an exhaustive answer I'm about to give)?  If the itch is from God then He will handle how you scratch.  I find no example in Scripture of where God points His people in directions for their harm and not for their good.  Also, if what you are sensing is something that will bring God all the glory, then chances are that it's a "good itch" so scratch away.  Finally, if scratching the itch is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time, that's not always a bad thing.  God doesn't call us to be safe (or reckless for that matter), but He will stretch us often beyond what our flesh feels is comfortable.  But when God does place the itch in our hearts to serve and move and live like never before, it's an itch that we can't help but scratch.