For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.
(Jeremiah 29:11-13 ESV)
If you know me, you know that I love control. I love having my ducks all in a row, my plans in order, and a schedule ready to be followed. If something gets messed up, I usually am unhappy with the change in plans and will fight hard to stick to the plan I had set in the first place. I also, in my foolish pridefulness, don't like to ask for help because I feel that if someone else tries to do something, they will mess it up, fail, or not do as good of a job as I would. Silly, right? I know. I think God thought so too because this semester He has really been working on my heart in that struggle. Last fall I applied for an summer internship that I wanted more than anything and I thought I had it. After all, I'm pretty close with the people running the internship, my application looked awesome, and I had seniority. I started to build summer plans around the thought that I had the internship in the bag. So you can imagine the complete and utter devastation I felt when I didn't get the internship. And to top it all off, my best friend, who is a grade level younger than me, got the internship. I was so deflated. My ego had been knocked down, my heart wrecked, and my pride down to ground zero. I was so mad at God for not giving me what I thought I deserved and for wrecking my plans for the summer. How could He do this to me? After all, that was MY plan for the summer. So the search for summer employment began in complete desperation. I was a wreck. What on earth was I going to do?
Fast forward to the beginning of the spring semester...
My current boss offered me a position in the same department I worked in last summer and work in all year and several of the moms I babysit for on a regular basis from my church have started asking me about watching their kiddos over the summer and are thankful for the extra set of willing hands for the summer months as many families have new babies on the way due over the summer months. One specific family had offered me a free place to stay over the summer as they would be welcoming their 4th child and an extra set of hands around the house would be appreciated. So I made plans to stay with them from their due date until my job began planning to find some part time employment for the time in between to bide my time. My plans seemed to be all in order and I was excited for the summer to start now that everything seemed to be set in stone and ready to go. However, God likes to wreck plans. 2 months before she was scheduled to make her appearance, the family I planned to stay with welcomed their daughter due to health complications with the pregnancy. After some testing, their little one was diagnosed with a fatal disease and given a short life expectancy. As someone who loves children and is close to this family, my heart sank to my knees. As plans started to shift, their 3 older boys needed care so that mom could be at the NICU with baby and dad could work. The boys bounced daily between family/friends/church family spending each day with a different person. Since I had already planned to stay with them over the summer, I offered to move in a few weeks earlier than planned to give the boys some stability and help out during the uncertainty that was now their life. As I sat on campus one night chatting with my best friend and sharing my change in plans and my fearfulness about an entire summer spent away from home with her she looked me square in the eye and said "Danielle... think about it. This is why you didn't get the internship." I was floored. I sat in shock... completely and totally amazed. She was right. If I had gotten the internship like I wanted to, none of these plans would've fallen into place and I would not have been given the amazing opportunity that I now have to serve the families I love so dearly. Although I would've still been doing something I love to do, it wouldn't be the same. I shared this with the mom of the precious little baby I mentioned and she was so thankful because it strengthened her faith by showing that God is indeed in control. He knew when I applied for the internship that I wouldn't get it because of the plans He had for me over this summer. The God of the universe knew exactly where I would be at this very time before He even created the world several thousand years ago. As I sit here reflecting on these events, I am brought almost to tears. I am such an anxious, prideful fool. I profess that I trust God fully with my life and plans but my actions say the exact opposite. But, through this amazing, God-ordained series of events, He has been challenging my trust of Him and what He is doing. Nothing surprise Him even if it surprises us. He has ordered these events before the creation of the world to bring more glory to Himself and to make us more like Christ. I am continually humbled by His character, faithfulness, and sovereignty. I can rest in His plan for my life knowing that He has my best interests at heart. It takes such a burden off my shoulders, friends. I spend so much time worrying about my plans, my future, and my day to day life that I forget who is in control of it. By me worrying about everything, it's conveying that I think I can do a better job running my life than God can. Silly, right? Friends, I challenge you to join me in this journey to utter dependance on God. Rest in the fact that He knows the plan for your life better than you do.
Romans 8:28 promises that:
Ephesians 2:10 says:"And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose."
Friends, God has prepared a path before us and we need to simply trust Him with our lives and seek to honor Him in our lives. Will we fail? Absolutely. We are sinful, broken people incapable of being perfect. That's why Jesus had to come and die. His work allows us to be reconciled to the Father in all our unrighteousness. Jesus's work makes us righteous, holy, and blameless in the Father's eyes. It gives us so much freedom to fail knowing we are forgiven but also gives a reason to strive forward and seek to become more like Christ. We don't have to work to be free, we are completely free to work as a response to Christ's work. In my struggle with self-reliance, I know I will fail and it will be an uphill battle but God is with me, in me, and beside me. He alone will help me through this struggle with my sin and I can rest in His completed work and run the race set before me in the hopes of obtaining the greatest reward one can ever receive, heaven."For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
So today I praise God for wrecked plans and wrecked pride knowing that God is completely in control every stop of the way through every mountain and every valley placed before be.
"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.(Romans 5:1-11 ESV)
Be free in Christ friends.
Dani
-Will you join me in praying for my dear friend's little baby girl? Pray that God heals her frail little body and that the family (who are Christians), can continue to trust God's plan for their little girl and their lives. Thank you!-
No comments:
Post a Comment