You can’t solve every problem in the world. You can’t cure every disease. You can’t fix every broken system, or rescue every person in need. But you can do what’s in front of you.

That’s where heaven starts.

Most of us want to make a difference. We see the pain in the world—the hunger, injustice, loneliness—and it can feel overwhelming. There’s too much. It’s easy to feel paralyzed by the sheer weight of it all. But God never asked you to do everything. He asked you to do something. And more often than not, that something is right in front of you.

Bob Goff offers this advice to graduates:

At the law school where I teach, there’s a sense of huge excitement as we get closer to graduation. But there’s also a sense of dread that’s subtle but ever-present in the students. It comes in the form of this question: “What’s next?” A lot of people act like they have a plan, and a couple actually do, but many times they don’t. More often than not, if you ask a student this question at graduation, they will stare back at you in silence. You can literally see the dread.

The best way to find the life you were meant to live is to get started, even if you have to pivot later. Great ideas that don’t work out are usually on-ramps to better ideas that do. And every time you put your passions into action, you learn things you couldn’t have learned sitting still. We grow on the way.

Jesus’ disciples had the same question most of us have: What’s our work? Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one He has sent.” That’s it. Our job is to believe in Jesus. The problem is that we keep adding to it, thinking there’s a different “plan” out there. Resist the urge.[1]

Jesus Did What Was in Front of Him

Look at how Jesus lived.

He didn’t try to heal everyone in the world. He healed the person in front of Him.

He didn’t preach to every nation. He preached to the crowd that gathered that day.

He didn’t start a global organization. He started with twelve men—and poured His life into them.

When Jairus begged Jesus to heal his dying daughter, Jesus went with him. On the way, a woman touched His cloak, hoping for healing. Jesus stopped. The crowd pressed in, Jairus was desperate—but Jesus turned, looked her in the eye, and said, “Daughter, your faith has healed you.”

When Jesus finished his life he was able to say that He had completed the work the Father gave him to do. He hadn’t cured every sick person. The whole world was not converted. There was much undone. But His work was completed. Charles Hummel explains:

On the night before he died, Jesus made an astonishing claim. In his great prayer of John 17 he said to his Father, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do” (v. 4).

We wonder how Jesus could have talked about a completed work. His three-year ministry seemed all too short. A prostitute at Simon’s banquet had found forgiveness and a new life, but many others still plied their trade. For every ten withered muscles that had flexed into health, a hundred remained impotent. The blind, maimed and diseased abounded throughout the land. Yet on that last night, with many urgent human needs unmet and useful tasks undone, the Lord had peace. He knew that he had completed the work God had given him.

On many occasions Jesus declared that he did not come to carry out his own plans. “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. . . . I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. . . . I always do what pleases him” (Jn 6:38; 8:28-29).

The Gospel records show that Jesus worked hard. After describing a busy day, Mark reports, “That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons” (Mk 1:32-34).

On another occasion the demands of the sick and maimed kept Jesus and his disciples so busy that they were not even able to eat. His family went to take charge of him, concluding that he was out of his mind (Mk 3:20-21). After yet another strenuous teaching session, Jesus and his disciples left the crowd and boarded a boat. “A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped.” Through it all Jesus was sleeping in the stern on a cushion (Mk 4:35-38). What a picture of exhaustion!

Yet Jesus’ life was never feverish; he had time for people. He could spend hours talking with one person, such as the Samaritan woman at the well (Jn 4). His life showed a wonderful balance, a sense of timing. On one occasion his brothers urged him to go to Judea. Jesus replied, “The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right” (Jn 7:6).

In The Discipline and Culture of the Spiritual Life A. E. Whiteham observes, “Here in this Man is adequate purpose . . . inward rest, that gives an air of leisure to His crowded life. Above all there is in this Man a secret and a power of dealing with the waste-products of life, the waste of pain, disappointment, enmity, death . . . making a short life of about thirty years, abruptly cut off, to be a ‘finished’ life. We cannot admire the poise and beauty of this human life, and then ignore the things that made it.”[2]

Jesus was never in a hurry. He was never overwhelmed. He simply did what was in front of Him.

That’s the pattern for us.