Editor’s Note: this is the beginning of a new series I will be focusing on for the next month or so. I’m really excited about the material that will be published in the coming days. Enjoy!

I am really good at going nowhere fast. I’ve perfected the art of spinning my wheels. Did it ever occur to you that it’s all too easy to do an excellent job of moving forward from Point A to Point…X? I know I often feel like whichever direction I’m not going, I’m making that journey in excellent time.

You know, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are some principles I’ve discovered that have revolutionized how I manage my time and how I plan for the future. I’m not saying I’ve got the whole problem solved, but I am in a much better place now than I was five years ago.

I think we often wish we could organize our lives with as much precision and anticipation as we would a trip to the Bahamas or a venture to the big city. Maps in hand, backpack filled with all necessary accessories, reservations squared away, itinerary all laid out in perfect harmony…the perfect time never to be forgotten. I don’t want to say that it’s impossible to have a great vacation where everything works out, because it is possible. I’ve been on one, and it’s loads of fun. But it’s one thing to live that kind of lifestyle for a week or two. For the rest of your life? I don’t know about you, but I have yet to talk to a single person who is living in the time and the place and with the people now that they expected they would five or ten years ago. Or even one year ago. Sometimes our circumstances can change on a dime and what once seemed like a ludicrous impossibility suddenly happens and our world changes in the blink of an eye.

What I want to talk about in this series is the idea that planning for the future and recognizing where we are in life’s journey is a worthy cause, but only when we understand the context in which history unfolds. We may think we can play travel agent and map out a “trip” into our destiny, but first of all, we know with so little certainty what will happen that at best we can only make a wild guess. And secondly, why would you want to do that? Many of the things I thought would be great to do turned out to be dead ends, and meanwhile so much stuff has happened to me that I never asked for or even dreamed of which has turned out to be fantastic and life-altering for the better.

We would be in such great shape and be able to walk forward in astonishing wisdom and courage if we could simply recognize a singular truth: God is the ultimate travel agent! God knows the future, because He’s already alive in the future, now. God knows the best way forward for us because we’ve already gone there in His eyes. And He doesn’t plan a trip for us based on our immediate comfort level but on our eventual capacity to hold visions and responsibilities we couldn’t possibly fathom. This isn’t a discouraging thought, but an exhilarating one — He’s created the adventure of a lifetime for us, and if we would but incline our ear to listen to what He’s saying about our next stop on the journey, we would gain the knowledge we need to move forward in confidence.

One of my favorite verses in the whole Bible is also a very famous one, and that is Psalm 23 verse 3. “He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteoussness for His name’s sake.” Not only do we find our refreshment and subsistence in God as we travel on our journey, but we are actually led in the paths we are to tread in order to give God the glory that is His due! I find this to be a very comforting thought. We don’t need to put together a roadmap of the rest of our lives. God has already done it, and He’s now acting as tour guide through the great adventure from birth until death and rebirth in the age to come.

In my next post in this series, I will talk more about the concept that God is with us — Immanuel — and further explain why God is the ultimate travel agent. Hope to see you then!