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Articles
What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do
Sooner or later it happens to us all. If you look back upon your life, no matter how long or short is has been, you have to recognize the fact that you have found yourself in a situation where you seem to be alone and frightened and you just don't know what to do. The road is dark ahead, and it really seems as though there is no end of the tunnel, much less a light at its end.
What do you do when you find yourself in a helpless, hopeless situation? What do you do when you don't know what to do? In most cases you will do one of two things: you will either wither away or you will grow. You will either allow the difficult situations to provide the impetus for personal growth or allow them to become spiritual “Round-Up” and kill off your spirit. To illustrate this, let us look at the lives of two very different men.
Judas Iscariot was a man who was chosen to be one of “the twelve” (Matt. 10:1-5; Luke 6:13). No greater honor could have been bestowed upon a man than that which Judas Iscariot received: he was called upon to accompany Jesus Christ during his sojourn here on earth and then be one of the people charged with going forth to proclaim God's message of salvation to a world choked and dying in sin.
Yet Judas had a problem with sin. Specifically, he was greedy. The apostle John tells us that Judas kept the money bag for the group and would steal from the things kept in his charge (John 12:6). Judas’ greed eventually led him to betray the Lord to His enemies for thirty pieces of silver – the price of a slave who had been gored by an ox (Ex. 31:21).
Judas eventually came to himself. He realized just exactly what he had done. It was then that the darkness must have closed around him. He did not know what to do. What answer can you give to the question “How do I turn back the clock?” So, in his desperation, he tried to undo that which he had done. He took the money back to the people with whom he had bargained for the life of the Son of God and confessed that he had sinned in betraying an innocent man to his death.
When Judas finally realized that he could not undo that which was already done he allowed his sin to choke him out completely. He went from that place to a field and hanged himself (Matt. 27:4-5).
Saul of Tarsus was a man who hated the Church established by Jesus Christ. He was present at the stoning of Stephen and even went so far as to be the keeper of the clothes of the men who had removed them so as not to sully them with Stephen's blood (Acts 7:58). As if consenting to and assisting in the death of Stephen was not enough, Saul, we are told, “made havoc of the church” (Acts 8:3). As Saul was on the road to Damascus, he saw and spoke with the Lord and was converted three days later (Acts 9).
Now, Saul came to the realization that he was not doing the will of God, no matter how fervently he had believed himself to have been. The darkness of despair closed in at that point, I would imagine. I know that I would be horrified at the thought that I had been actively working against God's plan. What a horrible thing to find yourself not only not following the God you profess to love, but in active rebellion against Him!
Saul made a wonderfully different decision than Judas Iscariot. Instead of seeking in vain to undo the things he had done in the past, Saul asked the simple question, “Lord, what would You have me to do?” He realized that he could not answer this question within himself. He needed God’s answer to the question. He did not live in the past, but decided to move forward and do whatever God would have him to do. From that question we see the birth of the man we refer to today as the apostle Paul.
Two very different men found themselves caught in sin. One appears to have tried to find the answer in self-sufficiency and killed himself when he finally realized that he did not know what to do. The other looked to God for the answer and changed his life so that his life moved into conformity with God’s will.
Which one of these two people are we? What will we do when we find that we don’t know what to do? Will we look to ourselves or seek God’s answer?
