Why God Doesn't Tell You What's Next

I have spent a lot of my life trying to figure out what the next step looks like before it happens. I like to see the big picture. Not that I’m super organized or want to be fully prepared for what’s coming up ahead. I guess it is just more that I want to be in the loop. Who really likes feeling left out — especially where her own life is concerned? Do you ever do this? Do you ever think about where you are and wonder what is just beyond your line of sight? When will we have another baby? Where will my husband or I be professionally in the next year? Should we stay here or move to a better school district?

I suppose this is what spurred so many days and nights where I would plead with God to show me what things would look like when the picture was finished. In college it was, Who will I marry? Once I married Jared, it was, Where do we go from here? And once my kids came along, I wondered, Can this really be it? Is this what being a mom feels like all the time? Or is there something just over the horizon that will change everything?

I would pray and ask the Lord for direction, all the while peering ahead into the dimly lit future, straining my eyes to see if there was something coming that I could recognize. But I never could. I never could see past the hand that the Lord was silently extending to me, simply asking me to trust Him a little bit further.

The more I think about it, the more I realize why He didn’t tell me how things would turn out in the end. It’s because I couldn’t have understood from where I was. It is because He knows me, and He knows that if I had seen this moment coming — if I had seen the wheat fields and the dirt roads and the middle of nowhere as a part of the story — I wouldn’t have trusted His plan. I might have even tried to change it. I’m good at that. I like to try things on and see how they feel and if they’re a good fit. But friend, life isn’t an outfit that we can just put on or take off. Life is like a garment that has been intricately woven from carefully chosen thread, each moment and each event coloring the design and shaping the finished work.

Our lives are made up of a million perfectly placed choices by the One who already knows how it turns out in the end. The beautiful truth is that the Master’s hands can take ordinary threads and weave them into something extravagant.

It was exactly what He is doing with all of my moments. And, friend, it is exactly what He is doing with all of your moments too. He’s busy spinning threads.

Excerpted from Hope Unfolding by Becky Thompson Copyright © 2016 by Becky Thompson. Excerpted by permission of WaterBrook, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

BECKY THOMPSON is an author, speaker, and the creator of the hugely successful website, Scissortail Silk, also known as BeckyThompson.com  What began in 2013 as a simple fashion blog has grown into a space for encouragement and inspiration for millions of women around the globe. Thompson resides in Oklahoma with her husband and their three children. Hope Unfolding: Grace-Filled Truth for the Momma’s Heart is Becky’s first book. 

Publication date: March 23, 2016