Sometimes God will tell us to do something, and we won’t have the slightest idea why He is telling us to do it. There may not be anything happening around us that would make the instruction make sense. We may look at what He has told us to do and think, “What does this have to do with anything?” But God knows things we don’t know, and He sees things we cannot see. He can see what is coming long before it ever becomes visible to us.
Let me give you a fictional example. Suppose there is a woman named Ruth who is helping her father with some of his business affairs. One day, while she is going through some papers, she has a strong inkling that she needs to make a copy of one particular document and keep it somewhere safe. At that time, there was no argument going on. Nobody has questioned the document. Nobody has asked her for a copy. As far as Ruth can tell, there is absolutely no reason she needs to do this. But she does it anyway and puts the copy away in a safe place.
Several years go by, and she completely forgets about it. Then a disagreement comes up concerning that very document. Someone says that the document did not say what Ruth knows it said, and now there is a dispute about what actually happened. Ruth remembers the copy she made years earlier. She gets it out, and there it is. The thing she had been told to do when she had no idea why she was doing it is now important.
That story is fictional, but the principle is something that happened to me when I was much younger. Scripture gives us reason to understand that this is something God can do. Sometimes God will have us do something today because of an event He knows will happen much later in our lives. We may not understand the instruction at the time we receive it because the reason for it has not happened yet.
That makes the meaning of trust a little deeper than we sometimes make it. We usually want to understand before we obey. We want God to explain the situation, tell us what is going to happen, and then give us the instruction. But that isn’t how He works. Sometimes He gives the instruction first, and our understanding comes later.
The Hebrew word בָּטַח, bāṭaḥ, means to trust, to have confidence in, to rely upon. When Proverbs tells us, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding,” Proverbs 3:5, the issue is not that understanding is bad. The issue is that our understanding is limited. God knows what we don’t know. If I only obey God when I understand why He is telling me to do something, then I am really trusting my own understanding more than I am trusting Him.
There is another Hebrew word that is important here, שָׁמַר, shāmar. It has the idea of keeping, guarding, watching over, or preserving. Scripture uses this word in speaking about God’s watchful care. Psalm 121 says, “The LORD will guard your going out and your coming in, from this time forth and forever,” Psalm 121:8. The picture is not of a God who becomes aware of our circumstances only after something happens. He is watching over us!
That is important because there are things God may protect us from that we will never know about. If He prevents something from happening, we may never recognize that we were in danger in the first place. If He redirects us before we reach a particular situation, we may simply think we changed our plans. We may not realize that God was already looking farther down the road.
We see something similar in the life of Abraham’s son, Joseph. Joseph could not have known, when his brothers sold him, where the whole thing was going to lead. He could not see the years of slavery and imprisonment ahead of him. He certainly could not see the famine that would eventually come upon the land. Yet when he finally understood what God had been doing, he could tell his brothers, “You planned evil against me; God planned it for good to bring about the present result—the survival of many people,” Genesis 50:20. Joseph understood something at the end of the story that there was no way he could have understood at the beginning.
That happens to us as well. Sometimes we only recognize God’s wisdom after we have lived through the situation. We may look back and remember an instruction that seemed almost insignificant at the time, and suddenly we understand why it mattered. We may remember something God told us to do, or not do, and realize that He knew what was ahead when we did not.
This is one reason I don’t want us to become so accustomed to looking for the spectacular that we overlook the simple things God may tell us to do. We can expect God to move in some enormous, unmistakable way, when sometimes His direction may be something as ordinary and simple as, “Do this,” or “Keep that,” or “Wait.”
We don’t always get the explanation. Sometimes we just get the instruction. And if the instruction truly comes from God, we can trust that He knows why He gave it even when we don’t. Isaiah records God saying, “I declare the end from the beginning, and from long ago what is not yet done,” Isaiah 46:10. We cannot do that. We live in the present. God sees the whole thing.
So if God tells you to do something today that seems to have no purpose, don’t automatically assume that it has no purpose simply because you cannot see one. There just may be a reason you don’t know yet. There may be something, some event ahead, that God is already taking into account and preparing you for.
And there is something else worth remembering: we may discover the reason later, but we may not. God is not obligated to explain every instruction to us. Sometimes we may look back and say, “Now I understand why He told me to do that.” Other times we may never know what God was doing behind the scenes. Either way, the fact remains that He knew. He knew what was coming. He knew what we could not see. And sometimes what looks like a strange little instruction today is actually part of God’s provision for something that will not happen for years. That is why trusting God cannot depend entirely upon our ability to understand Him. We are not trusting because we can see everything He sees. We are trusting because He can.
Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight, Proverbs 3:5-6.
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Prayer:
Father, I worship You because You see what I cannot see, and You know what I cannot know. You are wise beyond my understanding, and Your eyes are never closed to what is ahead of me. I praise You because nothing catches You by surprise, and You are able to prepare me for things I have not even imagined.
Help me to trust You when You give me an instruction I do not understand. Teach me not to dismiss the simple things You place on my heart simply because I cannot see their purpose. Give me the faith to obey You and leave the reason in Your hands. When You tell me to wait, let me wait. When You tell me to move, let me move. When You tell me to keep something, let me keep it. I don’t need to know everything You know in order to trust You.
Thank You for the times You have protected me without my ever knowing I needed protection. Thank You for the things You have already prepared that I have not yet discovered. I trust Your wisdom more than my own understanding, and I place my future in Your hands. In all that I do, help me acknowledge You and follow where You lead me. In Jesus’ name, Amen and Amen.
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Don’t take my word for it. Like the Bereans in Acts 17:11, search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so. Open your Bible, study God’s Word for yourself, and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you into all truth. Don’t simply accept my conclusions. If what I’ve written agrees with Scripture, hold fast to it. If it doesn’t, let God’s Word be your final authority.
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© AMKCH 9/2026
image done by imagefree at my direction.
If any of these people looks like you or someone you know, that is purely coincidental. They are not.
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