As I am about to enter into my senior year of high school, I find myself being bombarded with questions such as these. Do you know what you want to major in? Where are you going to college? Have you started thinking about what kind of career you want once you graduate college? Where are you going to apply to? What scholarships are you going to go for? And others of that nature. I don't blame the people who ask me these questions. They are natural questions to ask an upcoming senior classman. The only reason they seem to bother me is because I can't answer them with certainty. My answer is usually along the lines of, "Well, right now, my number one college choice is here," and, "I think I want to major in this." And, me being the over-thinker that I am, these questions raise even different ones in my own head (that again, I don't have answers for). What is my calling in life? Where am I going to be in 5 years from now? And then I begin entertaining the things I believe to be the "worst case scenarios." What if God asks me to move to the city? What if I hate my job? What if I mess everything up?
Only then, after I have allowed myself to worry myself into a frenzy, do I seem to remember what God says about my future. He says, "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself." (Matthew 6:34)
Then, here is the wisdom I usually respond with. "I could stop worrying, if I could just know the answers to all my questions!" I know, true wisdom right?.......NOT!!! If the peace in my heart depended on knowing all the answers, then why would I even need God? If I had all the answers, I wouldn't need God. Because I would be God. Humans haven't changed much, have we? Being like God, isn't that why Adam and Eve ate that apple in the garden? Because they wanted to be like God? And here I am, thousands of years later, doing the exact same thing.
By demanding all the answers, I am telling God, "I don't need You; I can do this on my own if I just knew the answers.' I am trying to become like God. But here's the secret, I'm not Him! I never will be! Oh, that I would learn to trust Him like Ester did when she went to see the king, not knowing if she would live through the encounter. That I would learn to trust Him like Mary, Jesus' mother, who said yes even when she had no idea what would happen to her. She could've been stoned to death, or lived out her days as an unmarried mother, shunned by her community. But these amazing women trusted God enough to go forward, without the answers.
So how do we respond? How do we live without the answers? We tell Him yes. Yes to anything and everything He might ask of us because we know His plans are for our good, to prosper us and not to harm us (Jeremiah 29:11). If we trust that His plan is best, we don't need the answers. We don't need to know everything God will ask us to do. Because we already know our answer. Yes. A trusting, joyful yes!
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