I read in my quiet time where God told Abram, "Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you" (Gen 12:1). This is a passage that My Beloved and I looked to when we made our moves halfway across the country and across the ocean several years ago. We felt God speaking to us through Abram's experience, and took a couple of short-term transfers. I know many other Christians who have left, holding on to this passage as a divining rod, just as we did.
Why is it that we claim some passages as God's direction for us and not other passages? For example, Jesus told the demon-possessed man who wanted to follow Him to go home instead and to tell people what great things He had done for him. He did that, and everyone was amazed! (Mark 5:14-20) How many times do we hear people saying that they're being directed by God to go home? I haven't heard many. Funny how we pick and choose our guidance passages.
My Beloved recently commented about the passage regarding Abram, that God was intending to make him a new nation (Gen. 12:2) and needed for him to separate himself so He could do just that. God's design on us is not to make of us a new nation. It seems to me that we have a tendency to want the exceptional examples in Scripture played out in our lives rather than tuning our lives to the life-patterns God sets before us throughout His Word.
This is not to say that I think no one should ever move. Not at all. But I do think we should consider our reasons for doing so, what we're going to and what we're leaving behind. And that we take into account the whole counsel of God rather than one exceptional example and say we want God to work in the same way for us.
We moved four times in a five-year period. The last move was to go home, which we didn't want to do. We liked where we were living and the church and friends we'd found--full of like-minded people. Little did we know how God was going to use that move home--to tell others what great things He had done for us. It was the beginning of an entirely new way of life.
We were not the exception, just a family who wanted to live out God's ways.
