In his heart a man determines his course, but the Lord determines his steps.
Proverbs 16:9

Our culture is consumed by destinations. We’re driven by outcomes and dominated by getting there, verses being here. But what I’m slowly realizing is that God’s driving passion breathes more deeply into the journey, than it does the destination. His unchanging purpose for our lives (Hebrews 6:17) is less concerned with where we ultimately go, as it is with the path we take in getting there. And specific to life’s decisions, God sees the process of our decision-making as far more important than the product of our eventual end.

Consider His Love: a journey that displays a process of falling, rather than a finality of being caught. Redemption: a lining of massively small points of beginning, into eternally sanctified products of end. And our lives are no different. Though birth and death try to outline life’s story, they actually just punctuate the sentence in between—the sentence that reads as true life. God calls Himself the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End (Revelation 1:8), so that whatever the decision, our perceived ends are actually just transitions into other willed beginnings.

God has endless desire for our decisions, and I long to see His handprints painting those destinations. But no handprint finds possibility without hundreds of smaller prints along the way. And the reality is, anything else offers an exhaustive search toward knowing an already known end. Because like it, or not, God’s will is going to prevail. Regardless of how much you work, pray, or prepare, His destination is going to out-destine yours.

So I think the challenge for us today is three-fold. It involves a submission—taking a backseat in navigating against an already found end. A trust—believing God in the growth aspects of this decision process, while knowing His hold on the eventual bloom. And finally, a surrender—detaching from the destination of this course and finding rest in the course of this eventual destination—one that is God’s anyway!