One Step at a Time

Have you ever wondered what God’s will for your life is or what it is that He wants you to be doing right now? I mean, He has given you gifts and talents that He wants you to use, different people that He wants to speak to through you and has a bunch of other great things planned for you. Yet sometimes it seems that we are making no progress at all. Why is that? I think that sometimes it is because we are not willing to go one step at a time. Could it be that we think that we can take the next step in doing what God wants us to do when we have not yet done that which He has already asked us to do? That is just like trying to take two steps with your left foot before you take one with your right. Impossible. In order to move forward you have to put one foot in front of the other; taking one step at a time. I often find myself getting stuck in this pattern of thinking. God tells me to do something and I reply with an, “Ok, God, I’ll get right on that.” The next thing I know two days and then two weeks have gone by and I still have not done that which God had told me to do and I am asking God what the next thing that He wants me to do is. How foolish of me to think that I could move on to the next thing before doing that which He has already told me to do. What I am talking about here is in regards to God’s plan for our lives. We all know that He has plans to prosper us and not to harm us; to give us a hope and a future right? Then why do I feel, so often, that I am not living according to that plan? Could it be because we have forgotten that He gives us light enough for one step at a time and somewhere along the way we didn’t take that step because we were afraid of what might happen. Then as a result have ended up going along on our own path for a while. Or maybe we just, in the battle to overcome that sin of being stubborn, didn’t want to take it and have now ended up right back where we started. I find myself doing that every once in a while. Going back and doing the same thing over and over again. Hoping that somewhere along the way God will see that He was wrong and that I was right. That He should now do things my way and tell me to do something other than what it is He really does want me to do.

Take for example the lesson that I learned about a year and half ago about staying up all night and sleeping during the day. In order for my body to operate efficiently and to take care of itself properly it needs to sleep during the night and not during the day. Well, I learned this while I was working the night shift somewhere and that was fine, and I was done working there I thought that I had come to understand this. Apparently not though because every time that I find myself not having anything to do before noon I tend to stay up until all hours of the night, even though I know that I am not being a good steward of my body. This has been something that God has convicted me on over and over again. Yet I still find myself doing the same thing over and over again. Why? I guess what it comes down to is that I am hoping that God is going to speak to me in some special and unique way during the dark hours of the night even though I know that it is against His will for my life. Don’t get me wrong here though. Sometimes, on occasion, God does speak to us during the night and when He does we need to be listening to Him, for He can speak at anytime. I guess another part of this is that I am scared. Scared that He is not going to speak to me and direct me into the next thing that He wants me to do. So I go back time and time again to a place in which He has spoken to me already hoping that it is in that spot that He will speak to me again. That is not how it works though. We must continue to plow forward trusting that He is in control. For if we continue to go back and do the same old things again and again, how is it that we are going to ever move forward?

Sometimes it is hard to remember all of the lessons that God has taught to us. We may find ourselves faltering from time to time, but thankfully God has given to us the Holy Spirit to help us on the way. He will sufficiently bring to mind the things that God has taught us. The Holy Spirit truly is a gift from God that we ought to be thankful for. It is He that not only guides us into truth, but brings peace to our hearts and speaks to us mysteries of the deep that we do not know. It is in our conversations with Him that we find the confidence to continue on the path that God has laid down for us. That was a slight tangent but the Holy Spirit has become such an integral part of my life that I could not help but write of Him for a short period of time.

I pray that as you are seeking God’s will for your life that you do not do as I have so often done and as the Israelites so often did, and that is to continue to go back and do the same things over and over again. Whether it be fear or something else entirely that keeps you from taking the next step that God has for you in your life know that you will not be able to move forward until you have done what it is that God is telling you to do. One step at a time, one foot in front of the other is how we plod along the path both in this physical life that we live, as well as in our spiritual lives. It is the Lord that directs our steps, even though we sometimes think that our plans our going to guide us better than He ever could. Oh, what foolish and prideful thinking. May we continue, by His grace, to walk one step at a time.

by Justin Kantonen
originally posted April 2008