We’ve all heard the overused saying that God has a plan for your life, and although it is so overused it has become cliché, it nevertheless remains an absolute truth. God does have a plan for your life, but it’s His plan, and you must submit to it. Too often, we make our own plans and expect God to cosign them. When His plan is revealed, we balk at it and kick against the goads because it’s not as glamorous as we would have hoped, and the McMansion our plan had envisioned within five years is nowhere in sight.
Lord, I know you have a plan for my life, but I’ve come up
with a few ideas myself. I know this is where you’re leading me, but the road
seems rocky and uneven, an uphill climb on the best of days, and I was thinking
more along the lines of palm trees swaying in the breeze and some white sand I could
curl my toes in.
We either submit to His plan or try to wedge our own plan
into His, pretending as though we are fully submitting to Him. Don’t get me
wrong, Lord, your plan is great and all, but I have some ideas. Just a few
tweaks here and there, and it would make it more palatable.
I’m sure Joseph would have preferred not to be betrayed by
his brothers and sold into slavery, jump to the head of the line, and be made
governor of Egypt without the thirteen years of suffering in between. The
suffering, however, made him, molded him, and refined him into the man he
needed to become in order to fulfill the duties foisted upon him once the
fullness of God’s plan was made manifest.
Sometimes it’s hard to wrap our minds around the reality that
our present suffering is a stepping stone to future glory. In the midst of it,
all we know is the pain, the privation, the loss, the lack, the feeling of
unease, and the reality of the walls closing in on us. Although we may not see
it in the moment, we must nevertheless cling to the truth that God has a plan,
and in His time, He will make all things beautiful.
Our faith must persevere and be strong enough to carry us
from where we are presently to where He will lead us eventually. There is no circumventing
the season of pruning, molding, sculpting, and sanctifying. The flesh would
prefer to skip those chapters because only in this way can the flesh remain the
flesh, in its current iteration, unimpeded, unhampered, and unchanged.
It is in the midst of trials that our spiritual man grows
both in strength, ability, and understanding. It is in those seasons of life we
look back on and have no rational clue as to how we made it through that, in
hindsight, we are able to see the hand of God, the mercy of God, and the grace
of God keeping us, guiding us, and carrying us.
The strength, understanding, and spiritual growth of each individual
experience build upon the other until we become what God intended us to be all
along, and the only thing incumbent upon us as individuals is to not give up,
surrender, or capitulate. If you keep putting one foot in front of the other,
all the while clinging to God, eventually you will walk through the fire you
are currently in, and it will become a stone of remembrance recalling what God
took you through rather than your permanent state.
Rather than cling to the life preserver until we are safely
on the ship, covered in a blanket with a hot cocoa to hand, many of us cling to
it long enough to catch our breath, then let go, thinking we can swim to shore
on our own strength. You can’t. None of us can. No matter how strong we may
think ourselves to be, no matter how close the shore looks, clinging to God is the
only way to make it through the storm.
Prayer allows us to know that God is there, present, and engaged.
We don’t have to guess at it, wonder about it, or doubt His presence if every
morning upon waking and every night before laying our head on a pillow, we
commune with Him, have fellowship with Him, and engage with Him.
Rather than waste our days wondering if He is truly there, if
He would listen when we cried out, why not take the time to engage? Why not
take the time to cry out? Why not take the time to come before Him in humility
and desire, and unburden your heart before Him?
There are also a myriad of souls that will not come before
God in prayer because they fear what He will say. They know their walk has
stagnated, their hearts are unrepentant, they’ve allowed the whispers of the world
to outshine the voice of God, and they’d rather convince themselves they’re
fine just the way they are than come before God and be told they need to repent
and rekindle the fire of their first love.
That they avoid being chastened does not change the reality
of their predicament. Just because everyone I come across doesn’t tell me I’m
fat, or I lock myself in my basement, avoiding everyone so they don’t have the
opportunity to say it, doesn’t mean I’m thin. It just means I’m finding
inventive ways of having what I know to be true not be confirmed by everyone
else.
Those who ignore prayer because they fear being chastened
already know there are areas of their lives that must be shored up and dealt
with. Not having it confirmed by the almighty doesn’t change the reality of the
situation. It just keeps them in the same stagnant, joyless, powerless,
purposeless environment that brought them to the point of no longer having
fellowship with God in the first place.
Micah 6:8, “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what
does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with your God?”
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
No comments:
Post a Comment