There’s a wonderful yet poorly named mission trip preparation series called Help, I’m Going on a Short Term Mission Trip!  (Told you it was poorly named.)  Despite the name, it’s an amazing book.  One aspect that is covered is the need for any short-term missionary to discern who all belongs on their team.  I love the way the write approaches this.  He calls it Support Discovery.

The idea is that the right people are waiting to make up your team and you must pray and approach the Lord and then discerningly assemble that team.  What a profound approach to so much more than missions.

Today I have worked on a Bible study lesson.  I could approach that as an attempt to ‘come up with’ a good and applicable lesson.  Or I could realize that God already has something He’d like to say and I just have to DISCOVER what that is and say that. 

The cliched verse rings true:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”             Jeremiah 29:11

While we so often quote this verse to graduates, there’s a new wisdom here for us. 

If God knows the plans He has and God has already charted a course for our days, why on earth do I expend my energy with some life-map of sorts before me attempting to chart that good course myself?  I don’t need to find a new world, I just need to discover the one He’s already mapped out. 

We so often think we have to figure things out, come up with good plans, invent new wonders, create powerful imagery.  All we really need to do is discover all that which God has already done. 

How freeing is that!  I don’t have to be witty or wise, I don’t have to be brilliant or cunning.  I just have to be faithful.  The pressure is off me to reinvent the wheel or deliver the perfect word or chart the perfect road map.  God does that—already did.  All I have to do is discover what He’s up to and get on board.    

If you’re concerned about what is next in your life, where to go, how to measure up at work, what the next big thing is you are to invent, deliver, or compose, things will be so much easier when you realize what a great director, worker, creator, writer, deliverer, composer you serve and how very good are His creations.  He’s prepared to reveal them to and through we His ambassadors and we can’t come up with any better than He already has.  Shift your concern from carrying the weight of creation and invention and perfection and move that gaze toward discovering what wonders He’s created, invented, and perfected for you and your life’s plan.

Discover.  Discover what’s been done.  Discover what plans have been laid.  Stop looking to create some mediocre version of what’s already been done to perfection.  Discover the good God has already composed and walk in it.