From the Acts 1:8 KBC collegiate team in Ecuador with our Daniel Wilhoyte

Have you ever wondered where you are going?  What the future holds?  What will you do when…(fill in the blank)…?  Or the different decisions you may have to make?  For the past week, I’ve really struggled with these kinds of questions.  My mind has been in the future, wondering what I will do when I get back home and go back to school.  What should I apply in my life that I’ve learned thus far on this trip with thirteen other college students?  And not only that, but how should I apply these lessons?  Thoughts and feelings have flown through my head so quickly I couldn’t even keep up with them.

It was only yesterday that I realized that I wasn’t focusing on the here and now.  I was so busy trying to figure out what God was wanting me to do in the future, that I was missing opportunities for the Lord to work in my life in the present.  I was reflecting so much that I wouldn’t spend time in God’s Word.  Also, my reflection time was just filling me with unneeded worries and anxieties.  When Jesus was preaching “The Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 6: 25-34 He tells us not to be worried about what we are going to wear or eat or about our life in the future.  Then in verses 32-34, Jesus says, “For after all these things the Gentiles seek.  For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.  But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things.  Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”  God wants to use me today, and I was preventing myself from being a willing vessel for the honor and glory of God.  I wasn’t focusing on the people around me or the open doors that God was placing in my path.

So with this in mind, I’ve been reminded that I need to be present in the present and not in the future.  The future is good.  Planning is good.  But thinking about “what ifs” when they haven’t happened or decisions that can’t be dealt with at the moment are not part of God’s plan.  That’s when I have to continue living day-by-day with faith and trusting in God’s promise that He has great plans to prosper me and not to harm me (Jeremiah 29:11).