We are often told we need a plan. A plan for college, a plan for a career, a plan for life. We hear success stories about the STEM majors and business guru prodigies who graduate college, get a high-paying job, start a family and eventually retire - a happy, secure life.

But, we all know there is more to happiness than that, and that even this fulfillment of the American dream does not secure true peace and happiness. Only Jesus does. Isn’t it better to live a life of uncertainty by the world’s standards, but absolute certainty by God’s?

I have been pondering uncertainty recently because I am making decisions that will likely dictate my future. (Translation: I have to start deciding what to do with my life.) I look around at people working high-paying jobs with little satisfaction, or people with lower income and a seemingly less put-together life but an unquenchable joy and love that comes only from God, and I have to ask myself, which would I rather have?

I am not saying that money and security in this life are wrong, or that there is anything to judge in having a secure job. I know that there is always more to the story. I am only saying that success is not what determines the quality of life - Jesus is.

If I end up working at a grocery store until I die, but I have a deep well of satisfaction that never runs dry, will I not have lived more fully than many? I don’t intend to let my dreams or the opportunities God has given me to go to waste because I believe that he has a plan for me that involves an education and a career. I acknowledge how supremely blessed I am to have these opportunities and this life. But when it all comes down to it, what matters in this life is not this life at all, but the life to come.

I never want to come to a point where, if I were to remove Jesus from my life, nothing would look different. If a career plan leaves no room for the Holy Spirit to guide me, then maybe it is more detrimental than helpful. Maybe others of you can have a life plan and still let Jesus be the King of your life, but I am coming to realize that if I am to truly surrender my life to Him, maybe it is better if I don’t have a five-year-plan. (Besides, how often do those five-year-plans really go the way you planned?) Rather than falling into a formula, I want my life to be Spirit-driven. Is that not the way Jesus lived? Is that not the story the book of Acts tells?

Maybe I will get that perfect job right out of college and live a successful life, and praise God if that does happen! I just never want these things to be the ultimate. If I can say along with Paul that I am content whatever the circumstances, then I will know that my focus is on the hope that is to come, rather than the struggles of this world. How freeing it would be to know that we could handle the worst this world has to offer because we have a peace that this world does not know. How exciting it would be to never be so tied down to a schedule that God could call me anywhere, and I could go.

This is not to condone being irresponsible or unprepared for life, nor is it to shame those who have definitive plans. I know that there is a balance between faith and practicality. This is merely to encourage those who do not have a roadmap for life and suggest that when uncertainty makes us live a more Spirit-driven, Christ-dependent life, maybe uncertainty isn’t a bad thing at all. Maybe uncertainty is liberating.

In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps. (Proverbs 16:9)