Motivation Monday – What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do
“When you don’t know what to do, God does. None of this is a surprise to Him. Paul’s words to a world in fear are just as true now as they were then. God hasn’t changed. He hasn’t given up on you. His grace continues to run after you even when you have run out of everything. Look up at Him. He is holding you.”
We all have a point when we are done. When we want to throw in the towel. When we want to storm out of the room and slam the door on our way out, only to realize we are in another locked room. When we don’t know who to believe, who to listen to, because everyone is saying a million different things at the same time, and the noise is deafening. There is a unified cry to stay safe but a million different versions of exactly how to do it.
This is a world in crisis. This is a world disconnected from itself. This is a world that, if left to itself, will slowly lose its humanity and sense of order.
It is in these moments, moments that I personally have sighed in disbelief and cried in frustration, that I ask, ‘how long, Lord?’
I do know that there is one, and only one thing to do when you don’t know what to do.
I do know there is only One person to go to, when you don’t know where to go.
We can begin to recover all we feel we have lost, even while we are in the middle of losing more.
Stop. Breathe. Redirect your focus. Look up, not around.
You can at the very least, recover yourself, when the world is losing its way.
Thomas Merton advises: “Contemplative life, therefore, begins with the recovery of one’s natural unity, a reintegration of our compartmentalized, colonized, traumatized, technologically entranced, and workaholic being. We must gather our fragmented selves from our distracted, exhausted, noise polluted, and frenzied existence, so that when we say, “I”, there is actually a unified human person present to support that pronoun. “
God is the only one that can put us back together when we feel things have fallen apart.
Listen to Paul’s word from 2 Corinthians 2:8-18, The Message:
“We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus’ sake, which makes Jesus’ life all the more evident in us. While we’re going through the worst, you’re getting in on the best!
We’re not keeping this quiet, not on your life. Just like the psalmist who wrote, “I believed it, so I said it,” we say what we believe. And what we believe is that the One who raised up the Master Jesus will just as certainly raise us up with you, alive. Every detail works to your advantage and to God’s glory: more and more grace, more and more people,
more and more praise!
So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.”
What you can do when you don’t know what to do is remember that God knows what to do.
And He doesn’t want you to give up in the meantime.
When you are surrounded and battered by troubles, you are NOT demoralized.
When you are spiritually terrorized, God has NOT left your side.
When you’ve been thrown down, you HAVE NOT been broken.
While you are going through the worst – you’re getting in on the best – the life Jesus lives in you!
When on the outside it looks like things are falling apart, on the inside, God is making new life.
What you can’t see WILL last forever and the things you see now today will be gone tomorrow.
When you don’t know what to do, God does. None of this is a surprise to Him. Paul’s words to a world in fear are just as true now as they were then. God hasn’t changed. He hasn’t given up on you. His grace continues to run after you even when you have run out of everything. Look up at Him. He is holding you.
I believe in you.
Cathie