Where are We Going?: Does it Matter?

By David Ryser

It was my eight-year-old son who taught me about walking with God.

I was pastoring a church in a small town.  One of my duties was to pick up the mail and take it to the church.  (Ah, the glamor of ministry!)  I would often take one of my children along with me.  We would walk to the post office, get the mail, go back home, and then I would go on to the church.  It was a routine my children were quite familiar with.  We did the same thing every day.

Until one day.

On this particular day, I decided to go from the post office directly to the church.  This involved taking a different route than usual.  My eight-year-old son was with me.  He was enjoying our walk together as we went hand-in-hand toward the church.  He walked happily along with dad.  He never slowed his pace.

But as we got farther from the post office, he seemed a bit confused.

I noticed his confusion and realized we had broken our routine.  I looked at him and said, “You don’t know where you are, do you?”

I will never forget his answer.

He looked up at me with a big smile on his face and answered cheerfully, “It’s ok!  I’m with you!”

And in that moment, I learned how to walk with God.

One of the difficulties in the most recent season of my life has been a sense of purposelessness.  This seems to be an issue especially for men.  We tend to be purpose-driven.  We need to have a purpose.  We need something to do.

I want to know where I am going.  And I want to know what I’m going to do when I get there.

But walking with God is an adventure.  We often have little idea of where we are going.  We have even less of a clue about what we will do when we arrive.  And even if we do have a notion of where we are going and what we will do, God manages to take us by a route we could not have predicted, and many times would not have chosen.

Has God always been like this?

Consider God’s call to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3).  God spoke to Abraham one day and called him to uproot his entire life.  Abraham was commanded to leave his country, leave his family, and leave his home.  And God didn’t even tell him where he was going!  God promised to bless Abraham if he obeyed, but wasn’t specific about what the blessing would be.

What did Abraham do?  What would you have done?

Abraham did what any self-respecting child of God would do.  He left his country along with his family and moved half-way to where God had called him (Genesis 11:31).  And when he finally did go where God had told him to go, he took a member of his family with him (Genesis 12:4).

Does that sound like anyone you know?  And it gets worse.

When Abraham arrived in Canaan, it was not what he expected.  There was a famine in the land (Genesis 12:10a).  Apparently thinking God had not foreseen the famine, Abraham promptly left Canaan and went to Egypt (Genesis 10b, 11).  He wasn’t in Canaan for even one whole verse!

Now does this sound like someone you know?

When God speaks to us, we are so excited!  We are anxious to get where we are going.  It never occurs to us that the reason God spoke to us so clearly and gave us such a great revelation is that we’re going to need it.

Because things are never what we think they are going to be.

Abraham’s trip to Egypt was a disaster.  (Surprise!)  It took God’s miraculous intervention (and 14 verses) to bring Abraham back to where he was before he went to Egypt.  But Abraham learned his lesson.  Didn’t he?  Not according to Genesis 20:1-18).

Are we reminded of ourselves yet?

We start out with such zeal when God speaks to us.  But when we encounter the unexpected along the way, we too often abandon God’s plan and work to engineer our own deliverance.  And then we wonder why everything turns into such a mess.

And then we blame God.

We claim to believe God is omniscient.  We say He not only knows everything, He knows everything in advance.  We walk with God, confident in this belief, until something unexpected happens.  Then we become confused and begin to walk in our own wisdom.

God doesn’t tell us everything in advance.  (I’ve often suspected this is because we wouldn’t start on the journey if we knew what was ahead.)  The Bible tells us that we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:17).

If we are going to walk with God, we must trust Him.  We often will not know where we are going.  We almost never know how we will get there.  And we have only the faintest idea of what we will do when we arrive.

So why do we choose to walk in our own ignorance and confusion?

Wouldn’t it be simpler just to take God’s hand and walk with Him?  We don’t have to know anything.  We just need to hold His hand.  God knows where we are going.  God knows the best way (not to be confused with the shortest or easiest way) to get there.  And He knows what we will do when we arrive.  It sounds like a good plan, doesn’t it?

So why is this so hard for us?

My son didn’t know where he was that day, but he didn’t feel lost.  He wasn’t lost because he was with someone who knew where they were, knew where they were going, and knew how to get there.  He didn’t have to do anything except hold onto my hand and keep on walking.

If we are walking with God, we are not lost.

Where are we going?  How will we get there?  What will we do?  And how will we do it?

If we’re walking with God, does it matter?

Responses to this article are welcomed.  You may contact the author at drdave1545@yahoo.com