Prov 3:5&6 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

You and I as the children of God have a course laid out before us and we are being led along paths that make up that course each day of our lives. Paul spoke of us as being cross-country runners in a great race for an eternal crown. He spoke as the course that we are running as being set before us or in other words that it was a course that had been chosen and laid out for us by none other than the All Sovereign Lord. It was He that designed to whom, when, and where we were to be born and how, when , and where we are to die. He before set the bounds of our habitation, both the time we were to be born and the time we were to die. It is really something awesome to imagine all of the what ifs. For example, what if we had been born in some third world country instead of America. What if we had been born to parents who were devoted to Allah or to the Pope. We could go on and on with all of the what ifs, but that would be just vanity of vanities and would serve little benefit if any. The fact is, the course was planned before any of that could have taken place and nothing can prevent it from happening as the Lord has decreed. You might be tempted to wonder why this or that is happening and why all of sudden your life is changing right before your eyes. Stop for a moment and consider all of those changes, all of those twists and turns, all of those hills and valleys, are but the paths that have been charted out for your personal life before the foundation of the world. Paul spoke of all the things he once was but he said when it pleased God to reveal His Son in me then he became who he now was-the Apostle Paul. So it is with all of the elect -when it pleases God He will reveal His Son in them and before and after, they will travel the path that He has chosen for them to travel.