Big Decisions - Part 2

I wrote yesterday about this season of big decisions.  I crave not only security in my life, but I also crave KNOWING.  I want to know the outcome.  I want to plan it and plan for it.  The interlude period, when I know decisions must be made but I don't know what awaits across the threshhold, drives me crazy.  No matter what it is.  Sometimes the decision doesn't even directly affect me, but I have to help make it.  It's the decision making, that will it be yes or no, that unsettles me. 

The other problem is that, at times, I doubt God despite my best efforts not to.  I think sometimes people of faith, or even people of no faith, think that if you follow where God leads you won't be as happy if you walked your own path.  Can I just say, that's insane.  This amazing, full of grace, loving, faithful, patient God is not going to take you down a path that will depress you. 

So how to pray in this interim period.  I keep praying those prayers for wisdom and for discernment and for stillness that I prayed yesterday. I am also praying for a recognition of how much BIGGER He is than me and how He craves to lead me into a good land.

Ephesians 1, one of my favorite passages, says, "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. "  (Don't you love that Paul says, "I keep asking?"  It's always been a process.)

I know I shared Psalm 37 yesterday, but doesn't it fit everyday as we pray for God to lead us and to act? "Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this...Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him." 

And then this:

For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,   
you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.

Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.

(Isaiah 64)

Thursday I'm going to share the final portion of my prayers and really focus on the "hopes and dreams" part of it all.  This book called Circle Makers by Mark Batterson is building on so much of what I'm seeing partially revealed on God's bigger plan.  Bigger than a single yes or no decision.  Because all of this, it's all bigger than one decision.  It's building to a crescendo. 

And I know this one thing, when I don't have any words to pray, when the wisdom seems a distant prize, I still can pray and trust His wisdom to find the right words: 

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed....We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.  And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8)