God's will demands our trust

     One of the greatest questions that every Christian will come up against is, “What is God’s will for me in this stage of my life.” My wife and I have been mulling over that question a lot within the past few weeks. The reason we are even asking that question is because in February I will be starting graduate classes to get a masters degree in pastoral ministry. This decision has far reaching consequences for the future of my family.
     The decision to begin graduate classes was not an easy one. There are several reasons for this. The first one is that I will be digging my family deeper into debt. This might not be such a concern except that ministry typically does not yield high monetary rewards. I should probably mention that my desire to be in ministry is accompanied by a dream to teach on a university level. This means I will have to attain a PHD and of course that leads to more money and more years.
     Probably one of the hardest things for me is watching my wife sacrifice so much to put me through college and see me pursue my dreams and calling. My wife’s dream was always to be a stay at home mom and now she is having to sacrifice her dreams so that I might accomplish mine. Her sacrifice comes at a great price because in addition to bearing the stress of being the main bread winner and watching her dreams slip by, we both are giving up the hopes we had for family life. This hope was that we could live simplistically with time for family devotions and bonding. But now we are reduced to me seeing her about an hour a day during the week in which we try to eat together.
     It doesn’t stop there though. Despite my desire to get a degree in a major that will better suite my goal of teaching in a university, I am having to major in a degree that will instead fulfill classes I need for ordination. Guess you could say I am trying to kill two birds with one stone by taking this particular major. I am completing ordination credits while getting my masters degree. I continue to weigh all the options in my mind that are available to my wife and I. I always come back to the path we are presently taking. However, the question I wrestle with is am I doing what is best? Am I doing the Lord’s will for my life?
     I could spend hours writing about this very question and discussing opinions. Yet the answer is not really an answer at all it is a statement. We must trust God. We must trust that God will take care of us. We must trust that God will take all of our mistakes and work them out for Good. We do have a responsibility to see that the decisions we make do not violate God’s known will found in His Word. Our responsibility to seek Him first and His kingdom and make wise decision is what is required of us. If we take seriously this responsibility then our conscience, minds nor heart need to be troubled. Thus we must trust Him completely with our own and our family’s future. After all  we have God’s exceedingly great promise found in Rom 8:28 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”