Part 3: Helping Your Children Reach Their Full Potential

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).

God is in control, yet we are called to cooperate in His guiding will. According to Romans 8:28, “God works in all things for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” That does not mean we must fearfully search for a single path that we think He has planned out for us in order for us to be in and cooperate with His will. That is impossible; we cannot know the full depths of His wisdom. Rather, He knows our path as we experience growth in God’s will daily.

From early childhood I earnestly sought to follow the path God has for me.  Like many young Christians, I pictured this path as a singular direction, a “destiny”, which I had to find. When I graduated from high school, I was ready to find that destiny. I asked myself sincerely, “What is the will of God for the rest of my life?”

Before I started college my mother gave me a book called The Will of God as a Way of Life. In the first chapter author Jerry Sittser says, “The will of God concerns the present more than the future; it deals with our motives as well as our actions; it focuses on the little decisions we make every day even more than the big decisions we make about the future.”