Looking back over my short life, I can think of six distinct junctures where I had to make a major choice about my future. What makes these six crossroads in my life stand out is that each of them carried a weight. The weight was so strong I could feel the gravitational pull they levied, as no part of my life escaped the ramifications of what I had to decide. For each of these choices I knew that whatever decision I made would change the path of my life from that point onward. This creates an enormous pressure for decision-making.
When the first of these choices confronted me, I was only seventeen. I felt the weight of that decision and experienced a deep sense of inadequacy as I pondered the multiple paths that lay before me.
We must patiently trust where God has placed us and attempt to live life faithfully in these moments.
When I look back over such points in my life, I realize I overcomplicated the process of making these decisions. I am a person who can overthink the ramifications of any choice. It is not uncommon for me to have a five or even a ten-year plan for how my life should work going forward. Though I believe planning is good, the illusion that we have the ability to plan in this way is deceptive. If I would have followed the plan my 17-year-old-self thought up, I would not be the person I am today. The person my journey has made me into is not one I could have envisioned, because I could not have envisioned the journey on which God has directed me. Making choices for the future and releasing the outcomes of these choices is a difficult but willful act of submission—an act of purposefully acknowledging our own limitations and submitting ourselves to a God who cares for his people.
As the people of God, we are entrusted with faithfulness within our means and not for that which is beyond our ability to control. For me, my wife Krista has best exemplified this ability to be faithful in the present moment. Often when I attempt to discuss important future matters, Krista will look at me exasperated and exhausted, and wisely state, “I can’t think that far ahead. I’m just trying to figure out what is for supper tonight.”
I understand that Krista rarely has the luxury of thinking far into the future, but she attempts to be faithful daily in the present moment in which God has placed her. Here lies the wisdom I think we finite people need to embrace: we must patiently trust where God has placed us and attempt to live life faithfully in these moments. When choices for next steps come, we trust that God has led us to that moment and we make a choice, trusting he will lead going from that moment. We rest in the God of the future to guide his people to his future ends.
Speaking of trust in this way can seem nebulous because it does not tell us how to go about making decisions when choices need to be made. Resting in the truth that God guides the journey of his people means we rest in the options he has given us. We rest in a God who guides and who provides choices, and rest in the truth that any or all of those choices may be okay to choose. To be faithful in the present moment means we rest in God’s leading up to that moment and rest in his leading from that moment. This does not mean we are not asked to do difficult work in discerning for next steps. Even as we rest in God’s faithfulness, we need to be introspective and examine ourselves.
For myself, I often find my own selfish motivations interfere in my ability to rest. As with any decision, one of the best remedies to my selfish motivations is to trust that God guides me through his people, and I must avoid making these choices apart from the Body of Christ. For any of us in the church, the choices we make are not just our own but have consequences for our local Body. We must not divorce our individual choices from the Body to which we belong. When making choices for next steps, we, the people of God, rest in the God of tomorrow and trust in him to lead us through the options he graciously provides. Resting then is a willful act of submission to the God who guides his people.
