Would I? YES!

"Let's say that God gave you chance right now to take a sneak peek at the next ten years of your life. Would you look? Why or why not?" - Mieka Phillips in Green's Not Your Best Color

Okay, so I know the proper "Christian" answer to this should probably be "no." After all, saying "yes" sort of indicates that I am not trusting God to give me a good life or that I am unwilling to be faithful with the little things that He has given me now without a look at what He will/will not give me in the future. Regardless my answer to this question is always a loud, unequivocal, (let's face it) scream from the rooftops with a bullhorn, "YES!"

I've been so discouraged this week. A huge part of it is my future plans and having them without having them. I'm having to commit to another year of something I don't want to commit to, and in doing that, I feel like I'm signing off on another huge portion of my life, both financially and locationally (is that even a word??). God's giving me perfect peace about committing; it's just my own selfish desires and my views of the expectations of others for my life still have to die. For some reason, every time I think they are vanquished well and good, a tendril begins to wave around and softly say, "This isn't what you signed up for! What on earth are we doing this for again? Is this good for us? What are other people thinking about us? Aren't you really, really unhappy?" and manages to resuscitate the whole set of me-focused desires and false expectations again to live another day.

My desires and expectations demand a guarantee. They want a promise that this is the best life for me. They want to know that behaving in a way that defies what I want at the time will benefit me in the end. They insist on a promise.

The Holy Spirit in me reassures me over, and over, and over, and over again that following God is the best life for me. That doing what He wants and going where I sense He is leading, regardless of how I feel about it at the time, will be best for me. My experience and logic (yeah, it's crazy that I'm about to use logic in this situation) remind me that God's never let me down in the past and following Him has always been best (even when it's been really hard).

Yet, I'm discouraged tonight. I want God to just kill off everything in me that causes me to doubt Him and His plan. I want to believe.

Lord, help me with my unbelief!