In all your ways

Before my mother died, I had to make a weighty decision in the hospital regarding her care. In all the confusion and opposing opinions, I was looking for God’s will as if it were an object that stood behind one of three curtains on an old TV game show, or as one looks for a hidden Easter egg, or as one tries to figure out the solution to a riddle. In other words, I was thinking that the answer to my question existed independently of my dynamic relationship with God.

When I asked my husband for his view on this life-and-death matter I was struggling with, he said:

“In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:6, ESV).

This was not what I was looking for. It seemed irrelevant and annoyingly evasive. But upon reflection I realized that my husband had pointed me in the direction of a profound truth. It is this: The Lord is pleased to “make straight paths” for us and to iron out difficulties and to solve problems, but He will insist that we arrive at it through moment-by-moment trust and obedience, not by trying to read His mind in advance. That is to say, “In all your ways acknowledge him.”

This is radically counterintuitive as a search method. God sheds light on our path as we choose to acknowledge Him in this moment, and then acknowledge Him in the next moment, and then acknowledge Him in the next moment after that. Moment leads to moment, revelation to revelation. This moment’s obedience results in the creation of an original new set of circumstances, one entirely different from the set of circumstances that would have resulted from a moment of disobedience.

How exactly do we acknowledge Him in all our ways? Sometimes it is by literally acknowledging the name of Jesus, say, in a conversation with someone intimidating, when we are tempted to fear mentioning Him. Rather than shrinking away in cowardice, we choose to own Him as our God and our hope. Sometimes acknowledging Him in all our ways is by choosing to do a right rather than a wrong, being conscious of Him.

I ended up trusting the process my husband enjoined: Do not try to figure out the solution to dilemmas of Thursday if you are only at Tuesday. Thursday will have challenges of its own. Honor God in the present moment, and here is his promise: “he will make straight your paths.”

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