His Plans for Us

“Many are the plans in the mind of a man,

    but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” (Proverbs 19:21 ESV)

We as humans, no doubt, have many plans, things that we want to do and to accomplish in this life. Some of those may be good plans, and some may not be, and some may be neither good nor evil, but just are. But we who are followers of Christ should submit our plans to the Lord for his approval, for he may have other plans for our lives. But first and foremost we should seek his plans for our lives and then walk in them in his power and strength.

I can recall vividly this one night the Lord had me up in the middle of the might speaking to me. Now he didn’t speak to me audibly but by his Spirit in my spirit. The year was 2016. And the Lord, through his word, was asking me if I would leave it all to go with him wherever he sent me. He asked me if I would leave my children and my grandchildren and my house to go with him wherever he wanted me to go. And I said, “Yes, Lord, I will go.”

Well, later that morning, after I had slept for a little while, I saw that my husband, who was working his job from home, was intently staring at something on his computer. So I asked him what he was looking at. He was looking at apartments in our hometown of Akron, Ohio. I asked him why, and he told me he wanted to retire and he wanted to move back to Akron, from our home in South Carolina, to care for his aged parents.

Immediately I knew that this was what the Lord was preparing me for in the middle of the night. I still went and prayed about it, to confirm that this was the will of God, and then I said “Yes” to my husband that I would move back to Akron (500 miles away from our children and grandchildren). And so that is what we did. And I know that the Lord had a plan and a purpose for that move at that time, but it didn’t last very long (1 year, 3 months) before we knew we must leave, and that the Lord was sending us someplace else.

And then we lived in another state and in another city for two more years before the Lord sent us back home to be with our children and with our grandchildren once again. And that is where we have been the past 4 years and 4 months. And I am convinced that all of those moves were in the plans of the Lord for our lives, and that the people we met and spent time with and talked with were in our lives for that time and purpose. And the Lord had his purpose and timing for bringing us back home to our family.

And as I have talked about before, there was a time in our lives (in 2004) when my husband and I were training to be church planters under our church denomination at that time. But while I was at one of their prayer conferences the Lord spoke to me strongly through the speakers at that conference and through his word that he had something else for me to do which he then made clear to me several months later.

And that is what I have been doing the past nineteen years, which is to write down what I am learning through the Scriptures and through time spent with my Lord each day and then to post my personal times of devotion with the Lord on the internet for others to read. Now a lot of those early on were the Lord opening my eyes to seeing so many things I was totally unaware of as regards what is going on in the world and in these market-driven “churches.” And he was also helping me to unlearn things I learned wrongly.

Eventually these writings became more like Bible study lessons, and this is what God had planned for me, to be a missionary on the internet, basically, which is ministering to people throughout the world instead of just to our small congregation we had. But this was not in my plans. I would never have thought of doing anything like this. And then he added on writing songs and then poetry and then doing video talks and Christian memes. None of this was in my plans or thought of on my part.

And these are just two of my personal examples from my life in order to illustrate how this passage of Scripture might unfold in our lives when we are sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit and when we are willing to follow our Lord’s plans and purpose for our lives even if it goes against or changes and alters the plans that we had for our lives, even if they are good plans. For we may have good plans, but they may not be God’s plans for our lives, at least not for that time and purpose. 

So, for me, the central message here is that, even if our own plans are good plans, they may not be God’s plans for our lives. And so we all need to be sensitive to hearing the Spirit speaking to us through his word and we need to let him direct our paths to where he wants us to go and to what he wants us to do. And that is no guarantee that everything is going to turn out great or that we won’t have definite challenges and even persecutions.

For, when we moved back to Akron, five months after we got there we were infested with bed bugs, something I never thought possible for us, for we are very clean people, and I falsely assumed bed bugs only came to people who were not clean. I was wrong! They were in the apartment building, and they went from apartment to apartment. And they were in my hair and I broke out in horribly large sores all over my body which burned and itched like crazy. But we were free of them in about six weeks.

And that was just one of the challenges that we faced there. For there were others, and then the Lord led us to leave and to go someplace else. But wherever we went God had a plan and a purpose for it all, as God has had a plan and a purpose for this calling on my life. And it has not been without “bumps in the road,” either, nor do I expect that there won’t be even more or worse “bumps” yet to come. For Jesus promised us a life of trials and tribulations and persecutions and sufferings for following him.

But the good news in all of this is that God is working his plans and his purpose through it all, and he will get us through these “bumps,” whatever they may be, when our trust is in him, and when we are walking in his ways, according to his commands. We have to just keep in step with him each step of the way in listening to what he directs us to do and in where he intends for us to go next, and his will and purpose will be accomplished through it all. So we need to be those who are making his plans our plans. Amen!

Oh, to Be Like Thee, Blessed Redeemer 

Lyrics by Thomas O. Chisholm, 1897

Music by W. J. Kirkpatrick, 1897

Oh, to be like Thee! blessèd Redeemer,

This is my constant longing and prayer;

Gladly I’ll forfeit all of earth’s treasures,

Jesus, Thy perfect likeness to wear.

Oh, to be like Thee! full of compassion,

Loving, forgiving, tender and kind,

Helping the helpless, cheering the fainting,

Seeking the wandering sinner to find.

O to be like Thee! lowly in spirit,

Holy and harmless, patient and brave;

Meekly enduring cruel reproaches,

Willing to suffer others to save.

O to be like Thee! while I am pleading,

Pour out Thy Spirit, fill with Thy love;

Make me a temple meet for Thy dwelling,

Fit me for life and Heaven above.

Oh, to be like Thee! Oh, to be like Thee,

Blessèd Redeemer, pure as Thou art;

Come in Thy sweetness, come in Thy fullness;

Stamp Thine own image deep on my heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrYhiK2nQBg 

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