JUSTIN CAMP

“Discernment is about listening deeply in the midst of our confusion and uncertainty until the voice of God’s Spirit rises above all other voices. It is a communal process that requires honest conversation, silent listening together and a shared commitment to seek nothing but God’s will — nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.” —Ruth Haley Barton

In the late aughts, I was drowning in discontent. What started years before as a slight sadness while sitting at stoplights on the way to work had become a full-blown gloom that I had to push into the depths of my heart just to get through a day.

I can see now that I was exhausted from trying to be something I wasn’t. But my heart was changing, too. God was healing things there. As I struggled through the weeks, I noticed that I was caring less and less about achieving the goals I’d set for myself long ago. As I pushed through each hour, I felt like I was becoming more and more of an outsider to the close-knit and once-close-to-me venture capital industry.

But I didn’t know how to handle the gloom, other than battling it down like bags in an overfull garbage bin before trying to close the lid. So, I just suffered the sadness and showed up as best I could as a husband, father, colleague and friend to the people in my life. By which I mean, not always so well.

In mid-2012, though, circumstances compelled action. Our firm had reached the point where we’d allocated nearly all of the money from our most recent venture fund to specific investments and forecasted expenses. So, my partners and our investors began asking me what I wanted to do next. Passivity ceased being an option. I had to respond. I needed to do … something.

Another fund would be the best source of income, for sure, but it would also require a new ten to twelve-year commitment. And my heart almost couldn’t bear even contemplating that idea. And I couldn’t go back to being a lawyer. I hadn’t practiced law for over a decade.

I had to choose something, but I couldn’t see what.

And that’s when Jesus, through my friends, came to my rescue.

In my confusion, I commandeered a meeting of my men’s group. I converted it into my personal version of something the Quakers call a “clearness committee” — something I’d read about in Parker Palmer’s classic “Let Your Life Speak.” It is, wrote the wise and wonderful Palmer, “a powerful way to rally the strength of community around a struggling soul, to draw deeply from the wisdom within all of us.”

Here’s how it works: A person weighing a major decision offers a group of people a summary of the issues at hand, their feelings about those issues, and any relevant background details. Discussion then ensues. But the people gathered, wrote Palmer, are “prohibited from suggesting ‘fixes’” and can only “pose honest, open questions.”

So that’s what we did. I explained my situation to my friends and described the options I saw: I could raise another fund, build a start-up of my own, or start a ministry. I was reaching. The second option seemed perhaps viable because I’d helped numerous companies get started. But my thinking was vague around the third. It was, however, the only one that didn’t make my heart sink when I envisioned it.

When I stopped talking, we prayed. We sat together in silence. Together, we listened for God’s wisdom and guidance. And that’s when the rescue came. Emerging from our silence, two of my friends looked at each other and spoke.

“I’m not telling you which option you should choose,” Chris said. “But whatever you do, you need to be writing.” (Notice how he broke the clearness committee rules.)

Then Brenden said, “I agree. You need to be writing.” (I’ve never been a big “rules” guy, anyway.)

My response came quickly. “Guys, I would love to do that. But I know enough about the publishing business. It would be almost impossible to support a family by writing.”

Chris leaned toward me and locked onto my eyes. “I think you need to not worry about that.”

“Without qualified help, God’s direct word will most likely remain a riddle or at best a game of theological charades.”

— Dallas Willard

Whoa! I mean, whoa! Chris is a serious guy. Weighty in spirit. And it felt in my heart like God was speaking directly to me.

I resolved right then, right there, to find a way to write full-time. And in the coming days, I made plans to wind down my venture capital career.

One of Western civilization’s greatest weaknesses is our obsession with self-reliance. Don’t get me wrong. In some ways, I love our rugged individualism. We wouldn’t be the people and the country we’ve become without it. But, in other ways, real ways, I hate it. It makes us weak. You see, despite breathtaking cultural and technological achievements, we’ve created a society of isolated decision-makers, each of us wrestling alone with life’s complications.

But this isn’t what God intends. Not at all. As our adoring father, he yearns to share in our fears and pains and hopes and joys. He’ll never force his way in, but he longs for us to speak to him about our hearts and to quiet ourselves enough to hear his voice in response. And as a devoted parent, he’s quick with wisdom and guidance, which he hopes we’ll pursue only so that we might heal and grow and flourish.

And God wants something else, too: He knows that listening for his voice in this noisy, messed-up world can be tricky and that applying his wisdom and guidance to the particularities and complexities of our individual lives can be difficult. He knows we need help. So, contrary to Western instincts, the books of Proverbs and Acts and Paul’s letters and many other places in Scripture repeatedly advise us to seek the help of friends — to seek communal understanding and collective discernment.

Seeking help is the spiritual discipline of guidance, and it involves three basic components: (1) humbling ourselves to the idea that God might have better and more relevant wisdom and guidance for our lives than anything we could devise or discover on our own; (2) actually seeking that wisdom and guidance, both generally, through Scripture, and personally, through listening prayer; but also (3) discerning and applying this God-given wisdom and guidance with courage and curiosity inside and alongside our communities of faith.

Are you pursuing life like this? Or are you still trying to do life alone?