Florence Chadwick was a world-renowned long-distance swimmer. She was the first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions, each in record setting time. In 1952 she determined to swim the 26-mile stretch from the coast of California to Catalina Island. She was accompanied by a support crew whose job was to watch for threats such as sharks or to rescue her in case of injury. About 15 hours into the effort a heavy fog set in which obscured her ability to see the other side. With her objective out of sight she lost her confidence and asked to be pulled out. While still in the boat she learned she was only one mile away.
The “what if” game brings a particular kind of pain—regret. Regret is hard to overcome, but the path to it is predictable. Any time we take our eyes off the target of serving God (Ps. 100:3; Lk. 1:74) they immediately drop to ourselves. We focus on our individual situation, how we would like it to be different and what God should do to make it better.
This is precisely what the Israelites did when they asked for a king. We must not think that God was against the existence of kings. He told Abraham that “kings of peoples shall come from [Sarah]” (Gen. 17:16). And when referring to the promised land God said to Moses, “…you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose” (Deut. 17:15). No, kingship was not the problem. The problem was self-pity and impatience. They rejected God as their king and demanded a solution of their own making.
What the people were unaware of was the fact that God had already chosen “a man after His own heart” to serve as their king (1 Sam. 13:14). But in their prideful discontent they dropped their gaze from the sovereign God who was both willing and able to care for them and focused on the world around them and on themselves. As a result, the nation’s leaders came to the prophet Samuel with a demand. “Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations” (1 Sam. 8:5). Even after an additional prophetic warning they retorted, “No! But there shall be a king over us, that we may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Sam. 8:20).
The people preempted the plan of God to bless the nation in His timing and, in the process, forfeited the blessings He had in store. God granted the people’s wish. He gave them a king custom fit to their specifications—tall, young and handsome. The man, Saul, was also egotistical, impatient and rebellious and whose life ended in shame. He was a poor ruler to the people, an unfaithful father to his son and a hateful enemy to the loyal servant that repeatedly spared his life.
Yet God is faithful. He still mercifully carried out His plan to make David king, the man after God’s own heart that had previously been chosen. While undeserving, the people still got a king that, to this day, is the pinnacle of the nation’s earthly reign. It is not David that we look to for hope, but his role in biblical history is a straightforward example of the faithfulness of God.
Perhaps we can use this as a biblical case study. Maybe we can move our what if’s from regret to hope. Instead of dropping our gaze from God when we are struggling and focusing on the world around us and ourselves, we were to continue to wait patiently to see what God has in store. What if our what if’s were exercises in forward-looking confidence and not retrospective regret? In other words, in the midst of the crisis, when the heavy fog has settled in and we struggle to see the other side, we were to say, “What if the God that is both willing and able to care for me is using this for His glory? What if I believed His promise that He will supply every one of my needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus?” (Phil. 4:19). The anticipatory what if keeps us focused on the God that controls history instead of the self-oriented what if that ends in regret. Don’t let your inability to see the resolution to drive you to doubt. Focus on the God of hope.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Romans 15:13)