What Do You Do When You Don't Know What To Do?

What do you do when you don’t know what to do?  Panic?  Call for help?  Give up?  Hide?  Pretend you know what to do?  Just plow ahead anyway? 

For many of us, it’s hard to admit it when we don’t know what to do.  On top of that, we often respond to that which we don’t know with the same management strategies that we’ve relied on in other situations. 

What would you do if a great army was coming against your nation?

The kingdom of Judah faced such a situation.  They didn’t do any of those things described above.  In fact, their response is very much worth our consideration:  “O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”  (2 Chr 20:12) 

You might wonder, what good does it do to simply have our eyes on God?

Where our eyes go to or turn to is very important.  The psalmist wrote:  “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?”  (Ps 121:1)  The help the psalmist needed really didn’t come from a land formation, nor did he likely expect it to.  He was probably using the hills as a reference point to get his eyes looking up to the heavens in anticipation of the supernatural help he needed.  In addition, it is likely that by looking to the hills, his focus was on something other than himself and his own resources to address whatever was before him.

In a different Psalm, we find the following: “Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, till he has mercy upon us.”  (Ps 123:2)  In this case, the psalmist is noting that servants normally look to their master for food, shelter and other basic needs.  In that same vein, we should look to the Lord for our needs.

But why look to the Lord?  Can He really deliver?  Shouldn’t we just rely on our own resources?

Verse two of Psalm 121 answers those questions and it really is the answer to the rhetorical question the psalmist posed in verse one:  “From where does my help come from?”  The answer:  “My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.”  The One who made heaven and earth is quite capable of providing anything and everything we need.  

Whether we don’t know where our next meal is coming from or how we will have a roof over our heads, we should look to the one who can provide.

And whether we face an insurmountable obstacle or issue and simply don’t know what to do, we should look to the one who can provide the help we need.

In fact, it’s probably best for us to frequently admit that we don’t know what to do so that we get our eyes off our own resources and our own life management skills that will ultimately prove inadequate and insufficient and get our eyes on the Lord!