For the past 10-15 years(off and on), I have pondered, prayed about, even distressed over this one question. What is God’s plan for my life? Throughout all of this time I have come up to several solutions that I felt He might possibly be leading me to. Many of them have been dismissed entirely, while some of them I have merely shelved to wait for God’s go-ahead nod. Surely any day now a bright light is going to come from heaven on my road to Magnolia journey and God will reveal himself and his answers to me. The problem with this is that I am spending so much time thinking about the future that I am dismissing the most important part of the plan. That part of the plan that I am missing is the “Now” part.
The verse above comes from the passage when Jesus went through the transfiguration on the mountain. I have heard and read this passage numerous times. The other night as I was reading through Matthew the part that stuck out the most of this passage was “Listen to Him!”
This is the plan God has for my life. He is showing me Jesus and His plan is that I will listen to what Jesus has to say and I will follow those words. I may try to respond to God with, “But what about next year? What about grad school? What about law school? What about Seminary?” His response back might quite possibly be “Quit over complicating things and quit focusing on the future! Listen to Jesus and share Jesus. That’s what I want you to do!”
Oswald Chambers put it this way in My Utmost for His Highest.
“God’s training is for now, not later. His purpose is for the very minute, not for sometime in the future. We have nothing to do with what will follow our obedience and are wrong to concern ourselves with it...However, if we realize that moment-by-moment obedience is the goal, then each moment as it comes is precious.”
I think sometimes our pursuit of "God's Plan for my Life" gets clouded by our own self importance. God's plan may be for me to raise godly children, to lead one individual to Christ, to be in a certain place on a certain day. I submit that there are many examples of simple people in the Bible whose sole purpose was to be in a certain place at a certain time so that God's glory could be revealed. Everyone was not called to be Peter or Paul, some were simply centurions with faith.
ReplyDeleteI think when we seek God's plan, we need a large dose of humility. God's plan may only be for us to be the guy who writes a blog post about God's plan one day. And if it is . . . that's enough for me.
Jeff
ReplyDeleteGood thoughts. We do need "a large dose of humility!" I want God to use me in amazing ways to do amazing things. The problem with living that way is that we let our perception of "amazing" get skewed by our selfish desires. When in reality, there is nothing more amazing in this world than a life that has been changed by the gospel and a person who is living out the gospel for God's glory. The path God puts us on to do those things shouldn't matter to us.