You Are Go For Launch!

"In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps." - Proverbs 16:9 (NIV)

When Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders flew on Apollo 8 in December 1968, they could not see where they were going. Even after leaving Earth's gravitation field for that of the moon, the lunar surface was out of sight for them. As the spacecraft rotated, they could see where they had been. As time went on and they sped further away, the details of Earth grew fuzzier. But they had a better view of the bigger picture.

Still, their destination remained out of sight until they actually arrived. Smudged and defective windows hindered their ability to see anything. Not only that, they had no sense of speed or direction in the zero-gravity vacuum of space. All the astronauts could do was trust Mission Control (some 200,000 miles away) to get them there.

Yet arrive they did. The Apollo 8 astronauts orbited the moon for some 20 hours before returning home, taking pictures and scouting landing sights that would enable men to actually land on the moon nearly seven months later, and Ron Howard to one day make a great movie starring Tom Hanks.

Here's my point: a lot of things can stop people from doing great things. And I believe God has placed within each of us the ability to do great things for others, great things to further His kingdom. We have ideas, plans, thoughts, visions. But when we can't see where we're going - when we feel like we're going nowhere ad have no sense of acomplishment or even direction - we can get discouraged and stop (if we even tuly started down the path at all).

Let me encourage you today to forge onward with whatever good plan God has put on your heart. Don't worry about the results. God takes care of that end of the deal. He will get you there. You just have to go.

And, who knows, maybe one day Ron Howard will make a movie about you. Not that I would set that as a goal.