What to Do When We Don’t Know

When Evelyn Christensen was first selected to be the North American Chair for the A.D. 2000 (a national prayer movement), she had no clue how to lead the program. She gathered sixty women’s leaders and announced, “I don’t know if what we are doing is right, and if it is, if we are the ones to do it. We are going to get on our knees and pray. I don’t want anyone to lead in prayer until God tells you what to pray.”

The ladies were on their knees a long time in silence. After twenty or thirty minutes, someone prayed, and then another. By the end of the meeting, not only did they have a sense of direction but a wonderful unity despite their various doctrinal backgrounds. 

When we face a situation in which we do not know how to proceed, God’s Word to the Israelites gives direction. They faced the uncrossable Jordan, and God said, “When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God...you are to move out from your positions and follow it. Then you will know which way to go” (Joshua 3:3, 4). They were to always let the ark (God’s presence) set the pace. We, too, must allow the ark to set the pace. When we refuse to rush ahead in our spirits but move only as we sense God going before us, we’ll always find His timing right and our path perfectly prepared.

But our “successes” are empty when we go in our own strength. “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1). The house may be built, the people entertained, the Bible study led, but unless God is doing the work, nothing is really done. Often we are blinded because we appear to have built something. We have entertained the people or our crowd doubled, but no one actually had a supernatural parting of the waters in their lives.

Dear Lord, protect me from proceeding as though I can do your work without waiting on You.

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).