When our eldest son, Jamie was just a toddler there was a stage that he would ask us several times in one hour “Where we goin’?“ I’d patiently answer, “Well, nowhere right now, honey. Maybe later.” Then ten minutes later he’d ask the same question.

If his father’s keys were heard jingling, off Jamie would run to find his coat and boots. Actually, little Jamie didn’t care where we were going — he just wanted to come along with Dad wherever he was going.

This sweet memory makes me think of the way we are praying these days. “Where are You going, Father? What are You doing? – Can we come, too?”

“Find out what God is doing, and then join Him” points out Henry Blackaby, author of “Experiencing God”. He illustrated his thought with an arrow pointing from side to side at the top of the page, labeled “God at work”. From there an arrow is pointing down to little stick men, representing people like you and me, and on that arrow is written, “God wants to draw us up into what He is doing!”

Our best ideas, innovations, skills, and talents amount to absolutely nothing in God’s kingdom if we haven’t been drawn up to that arrow and submitted our lives into what is on His agenda! We can’t initiate, we can’t decide which direction to go. That has already been decided, and God is on His way to a destination. We either go with Him, or He keeps going without us! This reminds me of the words of Mordecai to Esther: “For if you persist in keeping silent at a time like this, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place (Esther 4:14).” Because she yielded to God’s perfect will, Esther, instead of someone else, was the one God used used to bring about a mighty deliverance.

Let’s make sure we’re not scuttling around like the stick-men at the bottom of the page, but let’s allow God draw us upward, “...for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13)