It’s great to ask God for His direction and to want to do His will. But, if we’re honest, how many of us really want to hear the answer? How prepared are we to make changes and follow what He says? See, there’s two parts to this passage. In verse 3, the people are asking Jeremiah to pray on their behalf because they want to see ‘the way in which we should walk and the thing we should do’ but then they say, ‘whether it is good or bad, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God’ (v.6 ESV). Obeying is the next step after asking. It can be easy to hear God’s will and then decide to go our own way. We justify why we should go in our own direction and sometimes we decide to do nothing because it’s comfortable to stay where we are. Change can be a challenge, scary even, and it’s much easier to just do nothing. God wants us to keep moving forward rather than getting stuck in a ‘this-is-the-way-I’ve-always-done-things’ attitude. There are new things waiting for us (Isaiah 43:19). God only has good things in store, but sometimes we just don’t see why He wants us to go that way. Fortunately, the Bible has some helpful advice for when we feel like that: Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track’ (Proverbs 3:5-6 MSG).
What Now?
Feel God prompting you towards a new skill, project or way of thinking? Why not take one step (whatever size step you can manage) towards doing this today.