“I will instruct you and teach you
in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.”
Psalm 32:8
Sometimes I wonder how to figure out what I’m suppose to do. Whether an important matter, or just something trivial, I have been known for most of my life as being rather indecisive. I don’t want to make a bad decision, so my tendency is to just not make a decision at all. But that is a lazy, non-committal way to be, and it isn’t at all what God wants me to do. He does want me to make decisions, but I’m not the one who has to figure it all out; He will show me what to do. And for me, that is a big weight off my shoulders.
With God in control, bad decisions are no longer an issue. If I’m following the path God directs me to follow, then my choices might not be popular, but they will be good. It’s when I don’t listen to his instruction that I get myself in trouble. I must care more about what God says than what friends or family or the world in general says. I’ve tried doing it myself, and I can tell you from personal been-there/done-that experience that “figuring it out” on my own is never, never, never the best way to go. I spent years thinking that I’d just take care of things myself; if there was anything big enough that I couldn’t handle myself, then would I let God handle it. For years, about 99% of my prayer life was spent rationalizing and explaining things to God, telling him why this must look like a bad decision to him, but that he didn’t need to worry because I had it under control. HA!
One of the many wonderful qualities of God is his patience. I remember reading about the Israelites in the desert, and all the ways they’d mess up and complain and forget all God had done for them; I’d think they were idiots, and that I wouldn’t blame God one bit if he’d just zapped them all with a big lightning bolt or let the earth swallow up every last one of them. But then I realized that I was just like them. I was stubborn and “stiff-necked”, but eventually I realized that there really is nothing small enough for me to handle well without God guiding me.
Nothing at all.
God will teach me, guide me, in everything. There is nothing too big or too small for God to handle. And he will do it while keeping his eye on me. He won’t just give me a list of instructions and then leave me to decipher it on my own. He will lead me, my hand in his, down the best paths. All I have to do is be childlike in my faith, trusting him as a small child trusts that they are safe and knows they won’t get lost, just as long as he is holding my hand.
