My heart is pumping and my mind is going a hundred thoughts a minute. “What’s next Lord?”, “Am I making the right decisions?”, “What should I be doing?”, “Are you hearing me Lord?”, “Could you answer me Lord?”, “I’m confused and discouraged Father”. “Father, help.” These are my thoughts after experiencing an outcome that has not aligned with my expectations. Remove the words “Lord and Father” and these questions are asked by anyone, including the unbelievers, trying to find their way through life.
I love to solve puzzles and complex problems. Tearing apart the components and solving for outcomes is something I really enjoy doing. Making decisions and walking them out with the Lord has become my life’s largest complex problem. I’m constantly in my head working out the components and anticipating outcomes. I experiment with my decisions by factoring in past results, considering the unknowns, breaking down my data then putting them all together again in order to define an anticipated outcome. A scientific approach using a lifetime of data. Sometimes I’m right and the outcome is what I thought would happen but most times I’m wrong.
Recently, I have been using much less life experience data and much more prayer, signs, wonders and Holy Spirit input to see if that strategy is more accurate. Although, it has been a much more Kingdom involved process, I’m still often times wrong in my outcome. My expected outcome rarely aligns with what actually happens.
I’m right just often enough to keep trying, but not enough to find a predictable pattern. Which ultimately is my goal. My hopes in all of this experimentation is to discover a God led pattern to my life decision making. To discover a strategy where I can be so confident in my decision making process that I have much less error in predicting my future and can continue forward fully assured that I’m walking the “straight path” with God.
What I have discovered through these experiments, is that as much as I have become very good at problem solving, there are still too many variables to predict God’s outcome. I continually refine my processes and data and yet, more often than not, my outcomes are not what I anticipate.
Believe me, it has not been easy. All this data. All this thinking. All this disappointment. Yet, I will continue trying. However, through all of this experimenting I am learning some very important things. Firstly, God is more interested in my process than he is in my outcome. Secondly, he loves the time I spend with him trying to figure it out and he is not disappointed when I get it wrong. But most importantly, even though for the life of me I can’t figure out my own way, God knows where I’m going. God knows that no matter which way I turn, my path ultimately leads straight to him. Which in the end is all that really matters.
The simple answer to my life’s complex problem solving is one final and perfect outcome. Which is, and always will be, God.
Breathlife 