As we weather all of life’s endless transitions—of shifting relationships and careers, deaths of loved ones and changes in our environment, cross-country moves and persisting through the ordinary seasons, what would it look like to trust the branch beneath our feet will hold when we land on it?

In times of transition, we struggle and second-guess our decisions for work and calling. What I (and I suspect many others) didn’t realize was that the questioning would periodically creep back into my life, even ten years after college.

Sometimes we have to wait for God. We want God to move, to act, to do. We pray about direction, about health, about emotional stability, and God is silent. There’s no answer. We have to wait, and in the waiting, we can start to feel alone, isolated, ignored.

There have been many times when I have longed for precise life directions, when I wished for explicit guidance in the face of uncertainty. While the Bible makes clear God’s moral will, it doesn’t leave us specific instructions. Instead, Jesus gives us a simple command to love God and love others, a command that can be carried out in billions of ways. Although how we live out this calling is largely up to us, we can glean some helpful principles from scripture.

When we begin to worry about what God is doing in our lives, we grow dependent upon our personality, gifts, and resources, and that's not how it's supposed to be. God's word tells us that His thoughts are so much higher than ours, so how do we attain His thoughts?

When God asks us to trust, something in us rebels. It feels intangible and just out of reach. We want Him to leave us with our worry a little longer because at least it feels like something is being done about our problem. Have you ever considered that trust is actually God’s gift to us and not the other way around?

If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time asking God for things. But I often neglect to notice the grace of God’s movement in those areas. The goodness of life and the peace of our day comes from looking for grace. But we’ve got to train ourselves to find it. Reminders from scripture and spiritual practices help us notice what He’s done.

The world stage is just ablaze with sad headlines and upheaval. It tries to spark fear in us. Have you felt it? Jesus is no stranger to upheaval. In the midst of all of this, Jesus, who was afraid of nothing, speaks ever so gently to us saying--What are you really afraid of? You have turmoil because things are up in the air. But I am the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The only way we will persist through interruptions that will inevitably shake our plans is by embracing the life we find ourselves living, and embracing the change that follows rather than running from it. By opening our clenched fists, refusing to give our schedule the final word, and opening our hearts to the gifts that might be hiding inside the inconvenient. By being present to the presence of God with us.

With the internet and social media at our fingertips, we are constantly bombarded with notifications that interrupt us. We need to purposely tune out the world’s noise and intentionally focus on the Lord. We need to enter a time of silence and solitude, when our phones are on “do not disturb,” and distractions are nonexistent.

So how do we do this? We schedule it.

I’m in awe of how God wired us with the ability to see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. Yes, our senses help us navigate the world, but they can also help us draw closer to Him. Like a good father, God longs to connect with us throughout our day, and one way to cultivate this connectivity is by engaging our senses.

I needed to invite God into my world and give him the sacred space to reshape my identity. He lovingly led me into the pages of his word, where I found myself written all over his story.

The God kind of love is so completely faithful and just and accepting that it has the ability to make us completely secure, and safe. So that we have no physical need for worry because there is nothing to worry about.

Prayer is often seen as a solitary task using our own internal voice to connect with God. In borrowed prayer, we join with fellow Christians in the greater longing for God. I have found that no matter how often I repeat the same prayer, I can find new depth of meaning in its words and a greater sense of calm with each reciting.

In a busy world full of distraction and constant pressure to be doing something and going somewhere, it can be nearly impossible to be present. In fact, it has become our normal to find ourselves rushing from one place to the next, overwhelmed by to-do lists.  But that’s not how God wants us to live.