Chapter 1: Yes?

Every morning, when we open our eyes, we face a defining question: What kingdom will we build today?

This simple question shapes our lives as followers of Jesus. Each decision—big or small—builds either God’s kingdom or our own. These moments of choice, what I call jumping points, are invitations to join Team Hope: God’s strategic force for reaching a hurting world.

The question isn’t whether God will call you—it’s whether you will answer. One thing is for sure: God is not running short on callings; we are running short on commitments. Will we say, “Here I am”? Will we say, “Yes, Lord, use me”?

The Divine Disruption

It was a typical spring day in 1972 when my mom, Sharon Johnson, received a life-altering invitation: “Will you go to Haiti?”

At that time, international mission trips weren’t common. For a young mother, it was a daunting thought—leaving behind her husband and two-year-old son for an entire week to visit a country she knew nothing about. Would it be safe? Would it be worth it?

But this wasn’t Sharon’s first yes. Not long before, she had left a successful nursing career to become a choir director at a Methodist church—an unexpected move that had already brought unexpected blessings. So, when the opportunity arose to lead a 100-voice choir throughout Haiti, she took a deep breath and said yes again.

What she didn’t know was that this single word would ripple through generations. Her willingness to follow God’s nudge laid the foundation for a vision far bigger than she imagined—a vision to see Haiti transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes the biggest doors swing on the smallest hinges of obedience.

Your yes today might seem small, but what if it’s the first domino in a chain reaction that outlasts your lifetime?

When God’s Timing Breaks into Our Time

Here’s something I’ve learned about God’s invitations: They rarely show up when we’re ready for them.

The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is clock time—the steady tick-tick-tick of our schedules, plans, and routines. Kairos is God’s time—those sacred moments when heaven breaks into earth and nothing is ever the same.

Kairos moments are so critical because they’re when God’s eternal purposes break into our temporary world. These moments carry more weight than others—they’re pregnant with possibility, loaded with destiny.

What if the interruption you’re facing right now isn’t random? What if it’s authored? God may have been orchestrating circumstances, preparing hearts, positioning people—all so this moment could arrive. The question is: Will you recognize it? And will you jump?

My mom’s invitation to Haiti? Pure kairos. It made zero chronos sense. She had a baby at home, a career to consider, and a thousand practical reasons to say no. But kairos moments don’t wait for convenience. They arrive with purpose—and power.

Think about the Bible’s greatest heroes.

Moses was tending sheep when God lit up a bush.

David was delivering lunch when he heard Goliath’s roar.

Mary was planning a quiet life when Gabriel interrupted it.

None of them were ready. But all of them were available.

God’s interruptions aren’t accidents. They’re invitations. They expose what we truly value. When our carefully curated lives get disrupted, we discover whether our allegiance is to our agenda or God’s adventure.

The prophets understood this. Isaiah was just showing up to the Temple when God shook the foundations. Jeremiah said he was too young. Ezekiel was in exile. Still, God turned their disruptions into divine assignments.

So, what about you? That job loss . . . that open door you didn’t expect . . . that restless ache you can’t ignore. What if it’s not a problem to solve, but a calling to answer?

Sometimes God has to interrupt our plans—because we’ve become too comfortable with them.

When God Interrupts Your Plans

Fast-forward twenty-four years to the summer of 1996, and I am speeding down Route National 1 in Haiti.

Get out of the way! was my panicked thought as we wove through traffic in an old US military pickup truck. My wife, Vanessa, and I had been married less than a year, and we were leading a youth mission trip. She sat in the front seat, wedged between our driver and a young father cradling his gravely ill 18-month-old daughter. I held tight to the truck bed in the back, heart pounding.

Just two hours earlier, we had been standing in a small four-room building on a mostly barren plot of land—a place my parents had purchased decades earlier after that pivotal mission trip. Haiti had so intensely gripped my mother’s heart that she had a vision to one day start a mission to help the people there long-term, so that hope would be delivered every day, not just a couple of times a year.

We were standing in the small building with our youth team when a frantic young man approached us, pleading for help. He asked us to come quickly to a village up the road where a very sick baby needed our attention.

Vanessa and I followed him to his home located in a village of about 20,000 people known for its voodoo temples and spiritual darkness. Inside a tiny hut—no larger than a typical American bathroom—we met baby Gerline. She was beautiful, but burning with a fever and fading fast. Her parents stood nearby, their faces a mixture of fear and hope.

We prayed. We watched. Her breathing slowed. Her tiny body trembled. Realizing the situation was dire, we rushed her into the truck and raced to the nearest clinic—only to find it closed.

Moments later, we heard the sound I’ll never forget—baby Gerline gulped and gasped as she took her final breath. Her father cried out, “NO!” as the weight of loss hit him full force. The rest of us sat in stunned silence, unable to breathe.

After a 30-minute drive back, with the father holding his dead baby in the front seat, we arrived at their hut, and Gerline’s mother ran toward us, hopeful, expecting good news. When she saw her lifeless baby in her husband’s arms, she collapsed to the ground and wept.

Later, we learned the whole story. Gerline’s parents—both voodoo practitioners—had given everything they had to a voodoo priest when she first got sick, believing he could heal her. They had no money left for food or medicine. Gerline died of starvation.

The next day, Vanessa and I flew back to the US. In Florida, as we changed planes, travelers around us chatted cheerfully about the vacations they had just experienced. We sat in silence, shell-shocked. Back in our condo in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the weight of it all came crashing down. Something inside us had changed forever.

Have you ever had a moment when you couldn’t return to life as usual? When what you witnessed demanded a response? That’s often how God prepares us for our kairos moments.

The Conflict Between Culture and Calling

As I processed what happened, I thought about the plans for success I’d once carefully crafted in college. I had essentially rewritten Jeremiah 29:11 to fit my personal agenda: “For I know the plans I have for me,” declares Brad, “plans to prosper me and not harm me, plans to give me success, security, and a Ford Explorer (the teal and tan Eddie Bauer edition).”

I was well on my way. I had the Explorer. Vanessa and I had a nice condo. I had a dream job with one of the top Youth for Christ programs in the country. Everything was unfolding exactly as I’d envisioned.

So why couldn’t I stop thinking about Gerline?

I’d been traveling to Haiti with my parents since 1975. On my many trips, I had witnessed hardships most people couldn’t imagine: civil unrest after government coups, mass unemployment, and some of the Western Hemisphere’s worst poverty.

But this time was different. God was stirring something deep in both Vanessa and me. We couldn’t escape the realization that we could do something.

We began to sense a call to move to Haiti full-time and work to win the nation for Christ. Gerline’s death was a wake-up call—proof that when truth is absent, destruction follows.

We knew baby Gerline likely would have survived if her parents hadn’t been deceived by voodoo. We longed for every person in Haiti to know the truth, hope, and love found in Jesus Christ.

God wanted us to GO! We stood at a jumping point, recognizing that God had equipped us with gifts to meet this specific need.

When we shared our sense of calling with friends and family, questions poured in:

“Where will you live?” “Who will you work for?” “How will you make a living?” “What about starting a family?” “Is this what you went to college for?”

Looking back, I realize these questions weren’t rooted in disbelief but in confusion—confusion about why anyone would choose risk over comfort. We were stepping outside the script our culture had handed us, and it made people uneasy.

The truth is this: faith looks foolish to those who worship security.

I wonder: What script has your culture handed you? What would happen if you stepped outside of it?

The Voice That Whispers “More”

It’s rarely easy—or popular—to walk a path that defies the expectations of society. Yet within each of us, there’s a voice that whispers, “You were made for more.” You might hear it in quiet moments when, even after giving our best efforts, the pursuit of success feels strangely hollow and we sense something deeper calling us.

That restlessness you feel? It’s not a glitch—it’s a clue. Not a bug in your system—it’s a feature of your design. You were created in God’s image, and woven into that image is an eternal perspective. No temporary thing will ever fully satisfy an eternal soul.

Augustine said it best: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

So no, the answer isn’t a better job, a bigger house, or a more exotic vacation. That ache inside you isn’t a problem to fix—it’s a compass pointing you home. You were made for eternity. That’s why the things of earth, no matter how good, always leave you a little empty.

When we try to fill that God-shaped space with success or status, we slip into a quiet kind of idolatry. We ask our accomplishments to do what only God can: give us identity, meaning, and security. But idols always break their promises. They offer everything—and deliver nothing.

Here’s the paradox: The satisfaction we’re starving for doesn’t come from chasing success. It comes from surrendering to God’s call. Not because life suddenly gets easier—but because we’re finally living for something big enough, true enough, and eternal enough to satisfy our souls.

This tension between worldly comfort and divine calling isn’t new. Consider the rich young ruler from Scripture—or, as I like to call him, Rich Young (see Matthew 19:16–22; Mark 10:17–27). A successful man. A good man. He worshiped regularly, loved his family, lived honorably. And yet, no matter his achievements, possessions, or golf score, Rich felt incomplete. He was still searching.

So, one day he ran up to Jesus and asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

When Jesus listed the commandments, Rich checked every box. But something still felt incomplete. “All these I have kept,” he said. “What do I still lack?”

Then Jesus invited him to the high dive: “Sell everything you have. Give to the poor. Follow me.”

Here’s what many people miss about this story: Jesus wasn’t after Rich’s money—He was after his heart.

Mark’s Gospel includes a detail Matthew leaves out: “Jesus looked at him and loved him” (Mark 10:21). Jesus wasn’t trying to punish this man; He was trying to set him free. He saw that wealth had become a false god—a substitute savior Rich trusted for security, identity, and peace.

That’s why Jesus’s command was so specific. A doctor doesn’t prescribe chemotherapy for a broken arm—but when there’s cancer, radical treatment is required. Jesus was performing spiritual surgery, asking Rich to remove the one thing blocking his view of God’s Kingdom.

What Jesus asks you to surrender may not be what He asked Rich to give up. But make no mistake—He’ll always put His finger on whatever you’re clutching instead of Him. Not because He’s cruel, but because He loves you too much to let you settle for less than the real thing.

Rich was at his jumping point! He stood on the edge of a defining decision—but Scripture tells us that he walked away sad. His wealth, his comfort, his plan for life held him back.

We don’t know, but I wonder if, in that moment, Rich thought, “Hold on, Jesus. I’m a good person—we just established that. I obey commandments, tithe, and support charities. But give up everything and go anywhere? What about my family, my retirement, my security?”

But Rich said no. Why? Because his allegiance to his possessions was stronger than his allegiance to Jesus.

Though it happened long ago, his story is deeply relevant today. How many of us stand at similar jumping points, only to back down because the cost feels too high?

You have to wonder: What if he had said yes? What might God have shown him? How might God have blessed him? How much impact could he have had for the Kingdom?

The Art of Sitting Still

Here’s something I’ve learned about God’s uncomfortable invitations: Sometimes they don’t demand immediate action. Instead, they may ask us to sit with them—to linger in the tension, to wrestle with what they might mean.

That’s hard for us. We live in a fast-paced, fix-it-now world. Got a problem? Google it. Feeling stirred? Make a plan. But God’s invitations often call for something we’re not naturally good at: Waiting. Listening. Surrendering.

There’s a big difference between religious activity and radical obedience. We can stay busy doing “Christian” things—serving on committees, attending Bible studies, even going on mission trips—while quietly avoiding the one thing God is actually asking us to do.

Sometimes, God’s invitation isn’t to start something new, but to stop. To be still. To let go.

What if the next step in your spiritual journey isn’t adding more spiritual effort—but subtracting the noise?

What if God is inviting you to sit with the uncomfortable possibility that His call might disrupt your plans—and that’s the point?

From Rock Top to Rock Bottom

I know a successful businessman who experienced what he calls a “rock-top” moment—the opposite of hitting rock bottom. He had built and sold multiple companies, made millions, and transitioned to venture capital. But he was miserable.

Like Rich Young, he had everything—except peace. He recognized a soul-deep void success couldn’t fill. That realization changed his perspective on why he went to work.

Today, he uses his time and resources to mentor and disciple businessmen worldwide to advance the gospel. He jumped—and never looked back.

Sometimes you have to reach the top to realize you’ve been climbing the wrong mountain.

Every day, people like this businessman jump off high dives for Christ, having realized that power, fame, and possessions never satisfy our deepest longings. Yet every day, people