Just Do Something: Final Excerpt of {INSIGHTS} Vol. II
Kevin DeYoung, author of the book Just Do Something (which largely inspired this chapter) says, “I’d like us to consider that maybe we have difficulty discovering God’s wonderful plan for our lives because, if truth be told, He doesn’t really intend to tell us what it is.”
God does have a plan for us—a unique, totally specialized, individual plan, but it’s wrong to assume that we need to know what it is before we head out. Sometimes God not only wants but needs us to take that leap of faith first and understand that the trust part comes after. Philippe also writes, “Many do not believe in Providence because they’ve never experienced it, but they’ve never experienced it because they’ve never jumped into the void and taken the leap of faith. They never give it the possibility to intervene. They calculate everything, anticipate everything, they seek to resolve everything by counting on themselves, instead of counting on God.”
Consider Esther. When Mordecai came to her after she became Xerxes’s queen and warned her of the genocide the king had planned for the Jews, Esther had no time to discern God’s will. Mordecai pressed her, “Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” If she did not act, just as she was, who she was in that moment, her people would be slaughtered. And it wasn’t without risk. Appearing before Xerxes without permission meant certain death, but she had to take that leap of faith. God doesn’t take risks when it comes to our lives. He plans out every detail, knows every hair on our head, and He doesn’t take the risks so that we may.
DeYoung says, “We don’t take risks for God because we are obsessed with safety, security, and most of all, with the future. That’s why most of our prayers fall into one of two categories. Either we ask that everything would be fine or we ask to know that everything will be fine.”
But sometimes we have to give that yes before knowing the outcome.
Ready to learn how to take risks?
Find out in Volume II: Insights for theYoungCatholicWoman, available here. We ship next day!
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