There is something in us that needs to know. Not just the next step, but the whole staircase. Not just where we are headed, but every turn between here and there, every obstacle, every outcome. We want the complete map before we take the first step. And when life shifts beneath us — when a season closes, when a role changes, when the path we were walking suddenly runs out — that need intensifies into something close to panic. We mistake the absence of information for the absence of God.
Moses addressed this directly on the plains of Moab. He was 120 years old, standing before a nation on the edge of everything they had been promised, and he told them plainly: I am no longer able to lead you. The Lord has said to me, you shall not cross the Jordan. Forty years of wilderness were behind them. The land of Canaan was in front of them. And the man who had parted the Red Sea, received the law on Sinai, and carried this people through their wandering — that man was stepping aside. Everything was changing at once.
What Moses said next is worth sitting with. He did not give them a battle plan. He did not hand Joshua a strategic document. He said this: the Lord your God Himself will cross over ahead of you. He will destroy these nations before you. Joshua also will cross over ahead of you. And then, before any of that could produce anxiety or argument, he said the only thing that actually needed to be said — do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you.
The entire weight of that promise rests on a single word: goes. Present tense, active, personal. Not "God has a plan for your future" in the abstract, motivational-poster sense. God goes. He moves into the transition ahead of you. He is already there in the place you are afraid to enter.
That changes the question. We tend to ask, where am I going? What comes next? What does this look like in five years? Those are not bad questions, but they are the wrong first question. The right first question is this: who is leading? Because if the answer to that question is settled, the rest is not irrelevant — it is just no longer terrifying.
This does not mean we stop planning or stop thinking. Moses did not tell Israel to wander into Canaan with their eyes closed. There were battles ahead. There was land to be divided and enemies to be faced. The people would have to show up, strap in, and do the hard work of obedience. But the outcome of those battles was not riding on their strategy — it was riding on their relationship with the God who had already gone ahead of them. Their job was not to figure out the whole road. Their job was to follow the One who already knew it.
We struggle with this because we live in a culture that rewards certainty. We celebrate people who have a plan, who know their five-year trajectory, who can articulate exactly where they are going and how they are going to get there. There is nothing wrong with vision and intention. But when we make certainty the precondition for movement, we have quietly replaced faith with control. We are no longer following God — we are waiting for God to give us enough information that we can take it from here.
Israel had been waiting forty years. An entire generation had died in the wilderness precisely because they looked at what was ahead of them and decided the obstacles were bigger than the promise. They had more information about the challenges than they had trust in the God who issued the invitation. They knew the land was good. They had seen the fruit. They also knew there were giants, and the giants won the argument. What they failed to account for was that the God who parted the Red Sea was the same God standing behind the invitation to go in and take the land.
The generation that crossed the Jordan with Joshua did not have more information. They had more trust. They had watched forty years of God's faithfulness from childhood. They had heard the stories. They had eaten the manna. They had seen the cloud by day and the fire by night. When Joshua told them to consecrate themselves and get ready, they did not ask for a full briefing on enemy troop positions. They asked what time they were moving out.
That is the posture Moses was calling them toward in Deuteronomy 31. Not naive optimism. Not strategic ignorance. But a deep, grounded trust in the character and the covenant of the God who goes before. Be strong and courageous, he told them. But notice he did not say be strong and courageous because you are capable enough, because you have studied enough, because you have prepared enough. Be strong and courageous because the Lord your God goes with you. The courage was not rooted in what they knew about the road. It was rooted in who was walking it with them.
This is the word for every season of transition. You do not need the whole map. You need to know the Guide. You do not need to see the complete road. You need to be sure who you are following. Because the One who calls you into the unknown is the same One who has already been there, who holds the outcome in His hands, and who has never — not once in all of history — abandoned a person who trusted Him enough to take the next step.
Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. The Lord Himself goes before you.
Dr. William C.K. Yomes is the founding apologist of Faith Makes Sense and the Senior Pastor of Catalyst Community Church in Wilmington, Delaware. This article is part of his ongoing teaching ministry at Catalyst Community Church.