Faith for the Future

Well, I did it. After five years, I did it. I graduated from college. It's been about a month since graduation, and I still have this ridiculous, tumultuous mix of emotions. One minute I'm excited about the future and the next I become a puddle of sadness over the fact that a season of my life is over. And I kind of expected at least this summer to be relatively "normal," whatever that means. I'm finding out very quickly, however, that my life is already very different. Everything is changing, and I don't know how to deal with it. Especially the idea of figuring out what the next step in my life is going to be. My dream is to move to Taiwan for a while. I'm usually not very passionate about very many things, but this is a dream I care a lot about. And I've lived the past couple of months feeling fairly certain that going there is part of God's plan for me. I've put a lot of work into applying for jobs in Taiwan and trying to find ways to make it work. I think the total is somewhere around twenty five job applications right now. I've even gotten some pretty favorable responses from English schools in Taiwan. 


The problem, though, is that things just aren't falling into place the way I thought they would. And I've spent so much time depending on my own efforts to get me where I want to be. When I started realizing that things weren't going as planned, I started down this slippery thought slope that goes something like this: "Man, I really thought this is what God wanted from me. And it's what I want too. I've never wanted something so much in my life. Surely God put this passion in me for a reason. So why aren't things working out? Maybe it's not what God wants me to do. How do I know what God wants me to do? Is it even possible for me to be sure? How hard should I try, and when should I stop striving and leave it up to God? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW ANYTHING AT ALL?" ...and it just devolves further and further until I am left feeling confused and hopeless and scared. But today while I was reading My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers just smacked me in the face with a truth I really needed to hear: 


‎‎"It does not matter what my circumstances are. I can be as much assured of abiding in Jesus in any one of them as I am in any prayer meeting. It is unnecessary to change and arrange my circumstances myself. Our Lord’s inner abiding was pure and unblemished. He was at home with God wherever His body was. He never chose His own circumstances, but was meek, submitting to His Father’s plans and directions for Him."

Here's what I realized: I need to stop fretting so much. I need to stop trying to orchestrate my own circumstances so that they'll be what I think they should be. I don't think I'm supposed to. See, there's this miraculous freedom that comes with trusting God with your life. There's no freedom in living in fear of the future. The fact is, I'm human. I can't make the right decision every time and I can't perfectly discern God's will for me. God is the author of my life, and it's time I realized that and allowed God to pry the pen out of my hands so he can write the story without me constantly trying to cross out His ideas and write in my own. The freedom comes when I stop striving to do certain things or conform to an image in my head of what I should be. God puts me in certain circumstances for reasons I may not understand right now, and though they may not be what I would choose I have to look for ways that I should be serving and abiding in Him regardless of the circumstances. What I do and where I go and who I think I am isn't so important. What really matters in life is God and knowing Him. Everything else is just a subplot in a much greater story. 

Don't get me wrong...this is much much much easier said than done. There are things I want that I'll have a hard time giving up, if that's what it comes to. My dreams of going to Taiwan, for instance. Of course it would be hard to give up the dream that is most precious to me. I just have to have peace in knowing that God knows my needs and my potential before I do, and he's got plans to fulfill them. And I have to be okay with not knowing right now. God may still have plans for me to go to Taiwan. Maybe He has different timing for it. Maybe He has other ways of providing the means that I just haven't found yet. I don't know what will happen. And that's ok.

It's time for me to give up my fretting and replace it with faith.