When You Can’t See Where God Is Leading
Trusting God When the Path Doesn’t Make Sense
There are some decisions in life that would be a whole lot easier if you could just see how everything was going to turn out.
Should I do this? Should I go there? Is this friendship actually good for me? What should I do after high school? Should I serve a mission? What if I make the wrong decision and end up somewhere I never intended to be?
Sometimes I think what we really want from God is not simply direction. We want a map. We want Him to show us where every road leads, which decisions will work out, which ones won’t, and exactly what our life is going to look like a few years from now.
Then Proverbs gives us this:
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”
“In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”
—Proverbs 3:5–6
I love the way that verse is worded because God does not tell us not to use our understanding.
He expects us to think, study things out, ask questions, learn from experience, seek good counsel, pray, and make wise decisions. Our ability to reason and think is a gift from Him.
But there is a difference between using our understanding and leaning entirely upon it.
Why?
Because our view is limited.
Think about using GPS.
Have you ever had it tell you to take a turn that makes absolutely no sense? You know the area. You are pretty sure you know a faster way. So you ignore it.
Then a few minutes later you discover there was an accident, construction, or traffic ahead that the GPS knew about and you didn’t.
Your understanding wasn’t necessarily bad. You were simply making a decision based on what you could see.
Spiritually, I think we do the same thing.
There will be times when God’s direction makes perfect sense. But there may also be times when you pray sincerely, try to follow Him, and still wonder why the road is going where it is going.
Maybe an opportunity you were sure would work out suddenly disappears. Maybe you felt really good about a decision and then things became harder instead of easier. Maybe you prayed for one outcome and got something completely different.
That can be confusing because sometimes we unintentionally interpret “He shall direct thy paths” to mean:
“He will lead me down the shortest, easiest road that makes perfect sense to me the entire way.”
But that isn’t actually the promise.
The promise is that He will direct your paths.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland once shared an experience when he and his son came to a fork in a road and prayed about which direction to take. They both felt they should go one way, only to discover a short time later that it was a dead end.
Why would God allow them to feel good about a road that turned out to be wrong?
Elder Holland explained that perhaps the Lord allowed them to quickly discover the wrong road so that when they returned to the fork, they could move forward on the other road with confidence and without constantly wondering whether they had chosen correctly.
I love that story because sometimes we assume that if God is directing us, every part of the journey should immediately make sense.
But God can see something we cannot.
And sometimes we may not understand what He was doing until we look backward.
Think about your own life for a minute. Is there something that confused or disappointed you at the time but makes a little more sense now?
Maybe a friendship changed. Maybe an opportunity fell apart. Maybe your plans shifted. Maybe something happened that forced you onto a road you never intended to travel.
Looking backward, can you see anything God taught you there? Did you grow? Did another opportunity eventually open? Did you become stronger, wiser, kinder, or more dependent upon Jesus Christ?
Not every difficult thing that happens was necessarily sent by God. We live in a fallen world where people have agency, mistakes happen, and life can simply be difficult.
But even in those experiences, God can still guide, redirect, teach, and redeem.
The more you recognize that He has done that before, the easier it becomes to trust Him with the part of your story you still cannot see.
Maybe that is one of the deeper meanings of faith.
Faith does not mean pretending you can see the entire road.
Sometimes faith simply means knowing enough about Jesus Christ to keep following Him when you can’t.
Scripture
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”
—Proverbs 3:5
“In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”
—Proverbs 3:6
Reflection
What part of your life do you most wish God would explain right now?
Can you think of something that makes more sense looking backward than it did while you were living through it?
What did that experience teach you about God and His ability to direct your life?
Today’s Challenge
Think about one situation where you wish you could see farther down the road.
Instead of trying to figure out the entire future today, ask yourself:
What is the next faithful thing I already know I can do?
Maybe you need to pray more sincerely, have a conversation, follow a prompting, seek counsel, work harder, apologize, or simply continue doing something you already know is right.
Take the step you can see.
Then trust God with the part of the road you can’t.
Christ-Centered Thought
Jesus Christ did not invite us to understand everything before following Him.
He simply said:
“Come, follow me.”
There may be times when you do not understand why the road is going where it is going, but you do not have to know everything about the road when you know something about the One leading you.
Jesus Christ knows you. He loves you. He can see farther than you can see.
And through His life, His Atonement, and His Resurrection, He has already given us more than enough evidence that He can be trusted.
Sometimes the greatest act of faith is simply taking the next step and believing His promise:
“He shall direct thy paths.”
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