In the Details

It’s been almost two weeks since our family loaded up U-Hauls to begin our journey from Mississippi to South Carolina. We have been so excited about this move, knowing God is in it and looking forward to it with anticipation! Still, moving is a very stressful thing to do, and I could feel anxiety creeping in as our move day approached.

As I was praying about this, a phrase from Scripture came to mind: “You see me when I travel and when I rest at home.” It simply popped into my head while I was praying. I have learned over time, in trying to hear God’s voice in prayer, that this seems to be the primary way He speaks to me. It always gives me peace, knowing that I’m hearing Him directly from the Word, because we know that God will never tell us anything that contradicts what the Bible already says! We can’t audibly hear God on a regular basis, and the best way to know God’s heart and hear His voice is by reading His Word and becoming familiar with what it says. The more we read it, the more the phrases we encounter stick in our memory.

I’ve found that if a passage of Scripture comes to mind while I’m praying about something, and I go read it along with its surrounding verses, it almost always speaks directly to my circumstances as if it were written just for me. The living, breathing Word of God is truly wonderful in this way! Here’s the context I read:

“You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord. You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand! You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me!” Psalms 139:3-6, 13-18 NLT

Wow. God sees me in my house that’s about to sell. He sees me on the road with my family. He sees us in our new house before we even get there. He goes before me, preparing our home before we arrive. He “follows” me, taking care of the friends and family I already love and miss in Mississippi. And His hands are also in the details of the story of the family that purchased our Mississippi house, meeting their needs just as He has met ours.

I might have been worried about how smooth (or not) the move was about to be, but God had already planned every single day of my life—including this multi-day move—before I was even born?! What a relief to consider this and know that it is all going to work out.

And these verses that teach me these things are surrounded by, in my opinion, some of the most comforting words in the whole Bible: that while the earth is full of over 8 billion people and so many storylines are all happening at once, God’s thoughts of each of us individually are “precious” and “outnumber the grains of sand.” How great His love for us truly is. How calming it is to know I’m in His care.

I took this passage and listened to it on my Bible app for about a week on repeat, and it really helped me through our move. While I know not everyone reading this is in the middle of a big life change like a move right now, I pray that Psalm 139 comforts you today, giving you peace that God cares about every detail of your story, great and small—you aren’t lost in the mix or overlooked by Him.

And if you’ve been wondering how to hear His voice, I pray that this simple practice that has helped me throughout the years will be helpful to you as well. May you feel comfort and love from our amazing God today, the One who cares so deeply for each of us individually that He has written every single day of our lives in His book before even one of them came to be. He loves you and wants to be a part of your story!