“In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.”
Proverbs 16:9
Everybody makes plans for their days, weeks, even their overall lives. You make decisions to go to school, or to go to work, or to pursue a passion you’ve had since you were a child. As a child, I’m willing to bet you had a dream job at some point. Perhaps it was to be a star athlete, or a musician, or a movie star, or an astronaut, or some other crazy awesome career. As you grew up, you may or may not have pursued that dream, or it might have changed to another dream. Regardless of what that dream is, you make plans for your life. You make choices and decisions so that you will get to a point where you want to be. Even if your choices aren’t leading you down your top choice of possible futures, or even a top ten, you’re still making them so you can provide for yourself or maybe even others.
How many of your life altering decisions include God in the decision making? How many of your small decisions include God? Do you ever ask what step He wants you to be taking next? Do you follow your own path, pursuing what you want most, or what God wants for you? Romans 8 discusses how much better God knows us than we know ourselves, and how He can work every single circumstance for something good. The issue with that is that you have to let Him. If you continually do what you want, ignoring God’s will, then you won’t end up in the best possible circumstance. It might be a great future you can line up for yourself, a fantastic one you’ve always dreamed of, but God knows if there is an even better life out there for you. He knows exactly what you need. The great thing is: if you ask Him, He’ll direct your steps towards the best possible outcome. It might not always be easy, or obvious, or even look sensible, but God sees the whole picture. He can see where a decision leads in twenty years, when we don’t even know what it will look like tomorrow. No matter what decision you might be making, no matter how big or how small it might seem, ask God what He wants you to do in that situation. I guarantee it will be the best possible answer. It might not look that way at first, but stick to God and His will for you, and everything will work out.