At some point in our lives, we may have heard the phrase, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’, and yet many of us we try to master our future in one day. With haste and no precision, we take a thousand steps into our future and then find ourselves unnerved by the vastness of the dream.
It is true, that only a fool brags about not planning ahead (Proverbs 13:16), but we also need to be wise enough to understand the right time to slow down and take a thousand steps back, if necessary, in order to re-calibrate our focus.
There’s a reason why God does not show us our entire journey to the mountain top. He knows that if He showed us the entire journey, we would either purposely or subconsciously speak or take actions against the steps which we are required to take to get to where we are meant to be. Just like Joseph, God knows that if He had shown him what he would face before becoming governor, Joseph would have talked himself out of following the dream – being anxious over the horror of the pit, the humiliation in slavery, the accusations in the palace, and the pain and loneliness of the prison cell, before the arrival to the throne (Genesis 37; 39–48).
To protect us, God only shows us a glimpse of what is yet to come — that one day we will be triumphant as the head and not the tail; with the sun, moon and stars bowing before us (Deuteronomy 28:13; Genesis 37).
God will get us to where we need to be and only asks that we trust in His plans for us. There will be times when we will be required to march on covering vast ground, and other times when the wisest thing to do, will be to retreat and focus on surviving today’s battle alone. There will be times to set goals and envision the future, and other times to sit back and take each day as it comes.
When the time comes to take a thousand steps back and focus on ‘today’ alone, rest in the Word and in knowing that Jesus has already gone into your future to establish the peace which you will experience in the chaos of tomorrow. And when the chaos of tomorrow tries to steal your peace of today, remember the encouragement from Jesus, “…do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34). The emphasis is not that we should not plan for tomorrow, but that we should not be anxious about things that are not in our control, for worrying about them will not add a single hour to our lives (Matthew 6:27). But instead, we should cast our anxieties and burdens to Him who has control over them (Psalm 55:22; Matthew 11:28-29; Philippians 4:6-7).
©Katie Mliswa and MomentsbyKatie.M, 2018.
