The Valley: What Can We Do While We Wait?

One of my coaching clients is thinking of leaving a very lucrative career in sales to start his own business. Not knowing is very uncomfortable for all of us but it is particularly so for someone like my client. Outside of God giving us step by step instructions or guidance (which is not the usual life experience), we are tempted to just get stuck. When do we stay put? When do we move on? What is it going to look like? Am I prepared financially and emotionally? Is my family ok with this? How will it affect them? And sometimes in the absence of hearing specific answers from people, we do nothing. Or we ask God and we hear nothing. My answer to that is: certainly there is a time to wait on God for an answer, but rarely is there a time to do nothing. You know what happens when we do nothing? Nothing!

Making our life count requires action. Here was my suggestion to him. You are at a crossroads right now. Instead of being paralyzed by indecision, serve. Position yourself to be a light where there is darkness. Take the time to listen to guys in your small group and find ways to help them. Go out of your way to encourage a friend or even a stranger. Invite another person who is struggling out to coffee or lunch.

Focus on the little things that you do each day and realize that they add up to something much greater. Don’t let uncertainty get in the way of choosing to influence others. There is always something to do; love, serve, and lift up those around you.

The average person takes about 7,500 steps per day. If you consider an average age span of eighty years once you learn to walk you walk, you walk a total distance of 216,262,500 steps or approximately 110,000 miles. Five trips around the world.

Walking around the planet several times seems like a huge task. It is much easier to grasp when you break it down to one step at a time. Yet when you are in the midst of this hectic pace in today’s world, one step doesn’t seem like enough. We want to know the entire picture. What does God have planned for us next year? What are we supposed to be doing next month? How long will it take for our new business to become successful? It feels much safer to have a billboard sized master plan for our future. But scripture tells us: God orders our steps.

So here is what my client and I talked about: Instead of worrying about your future, just say yes to putting one foot in front of the other. Set up a budget for how much you need in reserves to get you fully operational at your new business. Determine some steps to get into the business as a side hustle for right now. Ask yourself some questions to give you clarity on where to step out in faith. What are my gifts and how can I use them in this new gig? How is God calling me to step out today? Who has he placed in my path that he wants me to serve right now? What has He asked me to do to make a difference in this moment?

John F. Kennedy once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” How can we serve is a more important question than how can we be served, although today’s culture often gets that confused.

In many places, Scripture talks about planting seeds. Richard Glover once said, “As seed is made for soil and soil for seed, so is the heart made for God’s truth and God’s truth for the heart.”

It is by planting seeds that we make things grow. Nothing grows without a seed. New business ideas do not. Friendships do not. Relationships with children and grandchildren do not. And when we plant a seed, we take it out of its container, we place it in the soil, and we nurture it until it develops into a fully grown plant. It doesn’t grow into a fully grown plant the minute we place it into the soil.

That is the way a legacy is built—one step at a time, guided by God’s word, serving others, planting seeds along the way. There is a song that recently came out that talks about God planting seeds in the valley. I believe it is called Flowers. As the song says, sometimes we can’t see God guiding our steps, but eventually we realize that he has there all along, planting the seeds and watering them. And even though we thought we were in a valley ( a place of desperation perhaps) flowers grow in the valley.