The Confusing Plan of God, Part III
"If you want to make God laugh,
tell Him about your plans."
~~Woody Allen~~
I finished a project today that was extremely stressful. For the last two and a half weeks I have been putting together a three disc DVD set for Paradox Church, the church plant I am involved with on the east side of Detroit. I won’t bore you with the technical details of how one dumps video footage into the editor, edits it, and eventually gets it onto a DVD. It’s exciting for me, but probably not in the least bit interesting to other people. I’m quirky like that. For some reason, however, a mix of over-committing myself, scheduling mishaps, purported college preparation, money woes, haggling with my former roommates, system crashes, a shorter than usual attention span, wasted DVD’s, an earlier move than expected, and everything going wrong that could possibly go wrong served to do nothing but frustrate me.
All throughout my life I have made plans. I don’t think I’ve set any of them in stone. There are very few things I have to do that are ‘scheduled’ in the traditional sense of the word. I’d like to think I’m a pretty open and flexible guy. Generally, I get to do what I want to do in life. That is all about to change, and I will have to pick and choose where I commit myself and where I choose to pass on one thing or the other.
So, what’s the theme? I’m an open and flexible guy, right? But, even the small plans I have been making continue to be frustrated. Let’s not even get started on the big plans I had for my life only 5 short years ago. What is God trying to say to me? Proverbs 19:21 (Message) states: We humans keep brainstorming options and plans, but God's purpose prevails. My prayer is that my plans, the plans I currently have, are the plans of God for my life. I’m not 100% certain they are. I am simply following what I think could be the direction He has chosen for me to go which, by the way, I have no idea where that actually is. If they’re my plans, as usual, they’ll be frustrated. If they’re the plans of God, they’ll obviously prevail. Either way, I have no idea what they amount to.
Still confused. But, for once, it’s a comfortable confusion. I’m sure that doesn’t make sense to most of you, but it does to me.
All throughout my life I have made plans. I don’t think I’ve set any of them in stone. There are very few things I have to do that are ‘scheduled’ in the traditional sense of the word. I’d like to think I’m a pretty open and flexible guy. Generally, I get to do what I want to do in life. That is all about to change, and I will have to pick and choose where I commit myself and where I choose to pass on one thing or the other.
So, what’s the theme? I’m an open and flexible guy, right? But, even the small plans I have been making continue to be frustrated. Let’s not even get started on the big plans I had for my life only 5 short years ago. What is God trying to say to me? Proverbs 19:21 (Message) states: We humans keep brainstorming options and plans, but God's purpose prevails. My prayer is that my plans, the plans I currently have, are the plans of God for my life. I’m not 100% certain they are. I am simply following what I think could be the direction He has chosen for me to go which, by the way, I have no idea where that actually is. If they’re my plans, as usual, they’ll be frustrated. If they’re the plans of God, they’ll obviously prevail. Either way, I have no idea what they amount to.
Still confused. But, for once, it’s a comfortable confusion. I’m sure that doesn’t make sense to most of you, but it does to me.
posted by C. E'Jon Moore @ 6.5.05
2 Comments:
Comfortable confusion. I guess that's as good a place to be as any. That's probably where most of us are, except for those few who are in a place to hear God more clearly. But even they don't know where the plan will come out, what twists are waiting along the way. Maybe being comfortable with our confusion is all we can hope for here and now.
For me, I think I know what God is calling me to do. I just don't know what He'll do with what I've done. How's that for confusion? But if my plans keep getting frustrated, like yours, maybe they're my plans alone and not God's. That's a whole other question. How do we know when we're being called and when we're being stubborn? Time will tell.
For me, it has always been two fold: Be obedient to the Holy Spirit, and be obedient to following God's word. If both of those are in place, then it is simply making that decision in the freedom that God gave us, and later testing and approving His will. Hindsight shows most things. As long as you know that where you are headed is in obedience to Christ, then keep on truckin.
DK
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