When the Jews were exiled in Persia at the time of King Xerxes, the king chose Esther – a Jewess – to be his queen. A chap named Haman convinced the king to order the destruction of the Jews, mostly by shaking money in front of the king. Through Mordecai, God asked Esther to petition the king to remove his edict. This is not to say this task would be easy, as women had very little status in that society and it would be against the law for anyone, including the queen, to approach the king without an invitation. Additionally, Esther was part of the condemned race.

Initially, Esther balked at the idea, but Mordecai tells Esther that if she doesn’t do it, God will use someone else to deliver the Jews and accomplish his will, but her own family would suffer. With this, Esther accepts the task. Rather than barrel straight ahead into the task, she brings the matter before God in prayer and fasting. She doesn’t do this to discern God’s will, she already knows what God requires, but rather does this to commune with her God. Even with this, she plans her actions carefully and gave Mordecai instructions.

With Esther’s careful planning, and the hand of a sovereign God in all of it, everything falls into place, the Jews are delivered and Haman falls victim of his own scheming. God had it all under control.

Much like Esther, as Christians, there are many times God confronts us with a task, either through his word, the church or even individuals. Many times we respond by saying it’s impossible, or why me? We forget that God only asks us to do things we are capable of through his strength. Even more crucially, God will work out his purposes with or without our cooperation, not that this diminishes our responsibilities to do his will, but that God is in complete control.

Even once we have accepted our task, we often forget to pray. As human beings we have a tendency to pray as the last resort. It is not unknown for even atheists to pray when things get desperate. This prayer is not to discern the will of God, as a lot of the time we know what we should be doing. When we embark on a task for God, we should earnestly pray about it, that we would relate with our God.

When we carry out the task, so often we fail to plan it – at all! Even though we may be doing a task for God, this doesn’t diminish God’s use of our abilities to achieve the task. We need to spend time thinking about the task and how we might go about it, that we would successfully accomplish the task.

Under the command of Joshua, the Israelites knew their ultimate destination would be the land of Canaan.

However, the details of their journey were unknown to them. They were called to trust their God. He would lead them by ordering his priests to go ahead of the people, carrying the Ark of the Covenant, and the people to follow Ark. They were not to follow the Ark too closely, to follow it at a significant distance, that all would be able to see it and not be misled by others.

God doesn’t promise the journey will be across an easy stretch of the Jordan, or at a time when the Jordan is low. He tells them they will have to cross the Jordan when it is in full flood, and to trust him to make it passable. They trusted God and he caused the waters to back up, that the Israelites might cross on dry land, much like he had done with the much larger Red Sea with Moses.

Ultimately, we know our final destination, but we may not the how journey. However, we can know the God who holds the future and who has everything under his control.

Are we always willing to trust God and follow his ways? We may not have a pillar of fire, or an Ark of the Covenant set before us to follow, but God has given us his word. In God’s word are his principles and though he doesn’t prescribe everything we should do in minute detail, with the principles set before us, we are able to intelligently determine his will.