Life is full of unknowns. And if you are like most people we have a natural inclination to fear the unknown. For example, no one can know the date when they will die. Or no one can know what stock prices will be one year from now with absolute certainty. And if you are like me, I much prefer knowing the outcome of things before they happen, than being left in the dark. However, as a Christian I have learned that while things may be unknown to me they are not unknown to God.
In fact, when you walk with Jesus you really never need to be afraid of the unknown because you are walking with the One to whom nothing is unknown. I really like what Corrie Ten Boom said regarding the unknown: “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”1 And my friends as a Chrisitan the more you read the Bible the more certain you can be of your future since Scripture tells us so much of what the future holds for believers. For example, we know where we are going when we die. We know that even if we are living with chronic pain, one day we will get a glorified body and never experience pain again. And while so many people spend their whole lives searching for the real purpose of life, we know that we were created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
And the exciting thing about the unknown is that when we walk with the Lord we need not concern ourselves with the day to day unknowns but with doing God’s will and knowing that everything will work together for our ultimate good and God’s glory. D. A. Carson shared, perhaps, one of the most exciting insights on this whole area of the unknown when he said: “To walk into the unknown with a God of unqualified power and unfailing goodness is safer than a known way.”2
In closing, I would like to leave you with a verse that has always been very comforting to me: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29). I like this verse for two reasons. One, there will always be unknown (secret) things that only God knows and we need not fret that we don’t know them but rest in the confidence that our good God knows them and that we need not be afraid to walk with our God into the unknown with Him. And two, our job is not to concern ourselves with these secret things, but to rejoice that God has given us so much revelation about Himself and how we ought to live. And as a result, our focus should be on following all the words of His revealed will for us and get excited, not only about life, but that God always has our back, even as we walk through the unknowns we inevitably will face.