Our concerns may be about career decisions, who we should marry, whether to make an expensive investment, whether to move, etc… These decisions may appeal to us because of the perceived blessings that could come with moving to a new area or changing jobs, but usually our minds will also go to all that could possibly go wrong.
That’s where our struggle comes in. We can be paralyzed, looking at the Pros and Cons of a decision and endlessly second guessing what will happen. We may think back to past times when we thought we were doing something that would make our lives easier or bring us happiness only to find that a lot of trial waited down that path. How do we know which is the right decision to make when we don’t know what will happen when we make it?
A man’s steps are from the Lord; how then can man understand his way?
Proverbs 20:24
At first, this verse may seem like a lament. How are we supposed to know what we’re to do, when ultimately only God knows what’s down the path we take? However, we should instead understand it as a comfort. We don’t need to worry about what might happen because the outcome is not in our hands.
How do we decide?
That doesn’t mean there’s no accountability when it comes to our decisions. God has made us stewards over the blessings he has given us, and we shouldn’t squander them. First in importance is that we diligently seek God’s will for our lives, so that we live according to the principles he has given us. However, if we have done what we can to make sure we’re living according to his principles, the outcome is in his hands. There is no wrong way to live a right life, even when it’s hard sometimes!
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
James 4:13-17
As Christians, we should be less concerned with what tomorrow brings and more concerned with the way God would have us live today. We have been instructed in the “means” by the one who controls the “ends”. There’s no reason for a Christian to worry about what their actions will cause. That’s God’s territory.
God’s Ways are Better
It’s tragic how many heinous acts have been committed because the future someone sought justified their actions in their own minds. Mao Zedong is perhaps history’s greatest example to date. His intent was to take a “Great Leap Forward” for his nation, but the harder he tried, the further he got from his goal of making China a better nation to live in. In fact, his policies resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of his citizens!
Most of the decisions in our life aren’t that great a risk to quite so many people, but there’s a lesson to be learned in these catastrophic failures. We may have all sorts of ideas about how to make life better, but we really have no clue what the future holds.
However, the one who does know the ends from the beginning wants what’s best for us.
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28
So rather than struggle to come up with a way in life that could get us where we want to go, we should strive to live according to God’s principles and to be content with what he has given us.
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
Matthew 6:25-34
Rather than endlessly trouble over what our future holds, we can rest in the one in who’s hands our future already is held.
