Shuffling Dominoes: When God’s Plan is Unclear

This summer, the Lord has literally not let me make ANY plans in advance. When I do make my own plans, they mess things up for us and make following His plan more difficult. But even when I have to course correct, He’s gracious and faithful. When I start to make my own plans and am listening for His approval, I usually don’t feel peace. It’s a quiet unrest. A small knowing that this isn’t the way, so don’t walk in it. So how do we still follow God even when the plan is unclear?

Following God’s voice is sometimes super fun and sometimes terrifying. And trusting Him with all the plans of your entire future when He doesn’t tell you what they are yet… that will stretch you in places you didn’t know you had. I have a visual of being pulled in all directions like Stretch Armstrong right now, and I feel it in my body and my faith!

Somebody told me once that when God is about to do something really big, he hides the plan. This has brought me a lot of comfort in a season that looks like walking blindfolded and trusting an unseen God is going to keep me on His unseen path. We see God hiding the plan when planning something really big in Exodus 13 and 14 when the Israelites are leaving the slavery of Egypt and headed for freedom and the Promise. The Lord didn’t lay out the whole plan to the people, not even to Moses. He only told them little by little.

If God told me, Hey, I’m going to set you free from all this oppression and I’m going to send 10 plagues to do it. Then I’m going to send you into the desert where you are cornered between an angry grieving army of Egypt with horses and chariots and you’re going to run by foot and wait by the water. Then I’m going to crack open a body of water and you’re going to walk through it. And then you’re going to go to a land of milk, honey… and giants. And you’ll wander for 40 years because of your lack of holy boldness and then when your whole generation dies, your kids will be set free and finally enter the Promiseland! And it’s going to be great!

Without any hindsight that God’s redemption plan worked like we have today, don’t you think we’d hear that plan and be like, No thanks. I’ll just stick to what I know and keep slaving away. I mean seriously.

Following an unseen God can feel confusing in the desert places, and that’s exactly how the Israelites felt leaving Egypt. In my own experience of exodus, I’ve noticed there are times where God’s direction was soooo clear! Like how He told the Israelites to put the blood of the lamb on their doors and flee in the night! Like anoint the walls and move! But then there are these lulls on the journey where it feels like… wait, what did I do? And am I going the right way? Why can’t I hear God’s voice? I need more confirmation. I’m so tired, I don’t think I can do it. And we get stuck in the hot sun, desert heat, and our brains kind of turn to mush.

And that’s when we have to choose if we’re going to keep walking in the last thing we heard from God in faith (no matter how weary or thin our faith has become) OR if we’re going to let those voices of doubt and fear and anxiety come in.

God is a God of order but I’ve noticed He hides his ordered plan from us. He just gives us one tiny step at a time, so from our vantage point, it can look like lollygagging when He says wait. It can look like aimlessness or instability when he says go here and then there. But we have to go back to I know the voice of the Lord and I trust He is setting this up for greater glory. I just don’t have His vantage point.

The way God shuffles us around on our journey always makes me think of my Great Grandpa shuffling dominoes on the folding table. He moved his hands across the pieces with precision and musicality. There was timing involved in His shuffle. I’m sure the domino pieces could appear to be entering into utter chaos as everything was shuffled and moved and displaced. But my Great Grandpa’s movements were so musical and timely that it actually felt like peace, order, precision. When he was done, we had no doubt that every domino on the table was exactly where it needed to be.

And so. If you’ve been praising God and praying and leaning on Him, but you still feel confused or lost in the desert… TAKE HEART. You’re like that domino on the table and you can trust you are going to end up exactly where you need to be.