“The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way.” Psalm 37:23
“So are you excited about knowing you’re moving forward?” I asked a sister in the Lord whose work life was clearly moving full steam ahead after a great, and long, investment of time and care she had poured into it.
“Yeah, but I’m not sure how my future is going to look,” she said.
I couldn’t help but laugh. Not to mention understand. Shouldn’t we know our future? Shouldn’t we be able to figure it out in advance? Especially when we work really hard at something like she was?
She was not through with her response. “But I’m okay with that.”
Sometimes I drive by a little business in which someone claims to tell people in great detail their futures. Palm readers. Tarot card readers. Etc. I also run across false prophets, and false teachers, or simply misled people, deceived people, and sometimes even well-meaning people, who are convinced they can see into people’s futures. The Bible makes clear that God at times does give people knowledge about the future for prophecy, warning, and even comfort and encouragement. But far too easily people can fall prey into believing, and claiming, to be able to see into someone else’s future when they are not. We may even try to do that ourselves – and convince ourselves we know down to the detail how our lives will turn out. And that we can control our futures. This can be dangerous.
My friend’s response bears a powerful message. First, she revealed she was excited about the future. Then she said she wasn’t sure about it. Then she said she was okay with that. How could this be considering how hard she had worked for the future?
FAITH. TRUST. Not in the future. Not in herself. In the Lord. Why are some of us so worried about the future? So focused on it? The lack of exactly this. FAITH. TRUST. Not in the future. Not in ourselves. In the Lord. When we submit our lives to Christ, yielding ourselves to the leading of God’s Spirit, committing ourselves to living by God’s Word, we don’t need to see our futures. When we surrender our lives to Christ, we surrender to God’s will for our lives, to His plan, purpose, and provision. The only thing we truly need to know about the future is that we are committed to Christ, that God’s Spirit will lead us, that our instructions are in God’s Word, that our eternity is with Him, and that we are on this earth and will be with Him forever to love, worship and bring Him glory forevermore! How can we know our future? When our lives are committed to the Lord, our future is His. There is nothing more beautiful and wonderful than to be in His fellowship forever!