You Need a Plan

He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6

“What is it?” Del touched the wooden pole and then pointed to a pile of unpainted boards. “And those?” Layne sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “Yeah…that was gonna be a coat rack, and this one…maybe a bookcase. I never got around to finishing them.” He swept his arm to indicate what had once been a three-car garage, but now resembled the after effects of an explosion at Hobby Lobby. “Yeah, I start out great, but lose steam halfway through and never finish. I’ve got thousands of dollars’ worth of parts in here—mechanical, carpentry, technology—but they’re worth nothing unless I do something with them. He kicked a two-legged table. “Guess I should throw some of it away, but it’s good stuff. I really need a plan.”

Do you ever feel like one of those unfinished projects? God saved you, delivered you, and cleaned you up, but every time you turn around, you’re messing up. You don’t want to. You’re trying to follow Jesus, but all you see is a big mess. This verse is for you! It was God who began that good work in you and it is God who will finish it. He doesn’t give up on His projects halfway through because, unlike Layne, He does have a plan. Jesus doesn’t toss anyone on the scrap pile, because He’s an excellent carpenter. His sandpaper is rough and His knife is sharp as he whittles away ugly parts of our character. Being God’s project can be painful, but He’s the only One who sees the message inside our mess. He knows how to bring out the beauty hidden behind our stubbornness, pride, and selfishness. When we cooperate with Him, He continually refines, perfects, and molds us into works of art. Our Carpenter never gives up until our lives become masterpieces, fit for the house of a King.

When discouraged with yourself, remember that your Carpenter is still at work.

 Don’t criticize His masterpiece. 

.

A Summons from the Most High

“Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. 

You must lead my people Israel out of Egypt.”  Exodus 3:10

Moses shifted his bare feet on the hot sand as the words hit him. Pharaoh? Egypt? He’d left them behind years ago. Maybe the Lord didn’t realize that. Moses jabbed a toe into the sand and scolded himself. Of course the Lord realized it. The basket in the reeds. The palace. His destiny had been ingrained in him since birth, and this burning bush had ignited that old yearning. How he’d wanted to belong, but his enslaved kinsmen had only offered fearful bows to his royal garments. He had ached to free the grandpas and uncles who suffered while he dined in the king’s courts. But all that was behind him. He’d blown it. He thought he’d forever cancelled any chance of redeeming himself. But this burning bush. The voice of God. He approached the flaming bush as a shepherd; he walked away as the leader of his people. He had answered a summons from the Most High.

Moses is not the only recipient of such a summons. Thousands have heard that Voice and bowed before Him. Maybe you’ve heard it too, but like Moses, you came up with excuses. You ran. You blew it. You thought you’d forever cancelled any chance of redeeming yourself. But there it came again: “I have a job for you.” Prayer is the way we bow before that burning bush, and when our lives are positioned to obey, He speaks. We are invited to take off our shoes and put on our purpose. We may approach Him filled with excuses; we walk away a chosen vessel whenever we answer a summons from the Most High. 

Learning to Pray

“Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me. 

Yet not My will, but Yours be done.”  Luke 22:42

“Oh God, please heal my daughter!” 

“Lord, if you are willing, don’t let me get fired.” 

“Oh, Father in heaven, please let me marry Jordan in fourth hour!” 

Heaven resounds with billions of desperate pleas by people like us. Many of them were answered; many were not. Most of those prayers did not end the way Jesus’ prayer ended, and that’s why God couldn’t answer them the way we prayed them. Aren’t you glad you didn’t marry Jordan in fourth hour? And aren’t we glad Jesus was willing to go to the cross anyway? Jesus laid His request before the Father, but He kept praying until His will matched God’s.

In those few words, Jesus gave us a model for our prayer life. He passionately made a request of His Father, but He didn’t stop there. We usually stop there. We think we’re showing faith if we lay our request before God and walk away. Jesus didn’t think so. He knew that what His flesh wanted did not line up with what His Spirit wanted. So He left the decision with God. He kept praying until He could agree with God’s choice. 

We must do that too. We may not want “Thy will be done” the first ten times we fall on our faces and cry out for help. That’s why we must keep going back, like Jesus did, until our hearts are aligned with His. Only then can we cooperate with God’s plan. And we are forever grateful that He did not go along with ours.

.

Yes or No

…And the LORD told him, "Yes, go after them. You will recover everything…" 1 Samuel 30:8

We LOVE those kinds of answers! “Lord, should we buy that house we want?” YES! “Lord, will I get a promotion at work?” YES! “Lord, will I be cured of cancer?” YES!  God is a Father, and He loves to say “YES!” when our requests are within His plan. But   when we assume that “YES! is His only answer, we ignore the “No’s.” We don’t like “No’s,” so we decide they cannot be from God and we plunge ahead with our plans anyway. That view of God is flawed, because we are treating Him as a divine slot machine—plug in a couple of prayers and get ready for the jackpot of our choosing.

 God is not a genie or a slot machine. He is Almighty God. He can do anything He wants, and He wants us to seek Him for Himself. He loves to say “YES,” but sometimes His plan requires the word “No.” “Lord, should we buy that house we want?” “No, I have a better one for you.” “Lord, will I get a promotion at work?” “No, the company will lay off everyone in that department in six months.” “Lord, will I be cured of cancer?” “No, I’m ready for you to come home, and four people will be saved because of it.” Seeking God’s answers means we are open to either a Yes or a No from Him. Seeking God means we want to know His heart, not use Him as a rubber stamp for our ideas. David and his men were victorious when they chased after the raiders because God had said “Yes.” But if God had said, “No,” it would have meant that He had a better plan.

When you seek the Lord, are you prepared to work in harmony with His answer?

Powerful Praying

Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! James 5:17

The goal of effective prayer is to align our wills with God’s. But sometimes we treat prayer as though it was a spiritual checklist, and once we’ve gone down the list, we are free to resume our normal lives. The Bible doesn’t present prayer that way. Even the idea of a “prayer list” can be misleading if we view communication with God as a duty. Praying down a list is fine, but don’t stop there. After we have complained, begged, repented, claimed and exhausted our list of demands, God is just getting started. Some Christians call this “praying through.”

“Praying through” means we’ve come to the end of our ability to pray, and we let the Holy Spirit take over (Rom. 8:26). The real passions of God’s heart are usually revealed at the end of our prayer list. He longs for us to join Him in His work on earth. He is not indifferent to our wants and needs; He simply has a bigger agenda in mind. Prayer is like a parent who takes a child to the doctor for vaccinations. The child may beg not to go, but a wise parent does not allow a child’s desires to supersede the bigger plan. Our prayers are often attempts to supersede God’s bigger plan. When we “pray through,” we come to know the heart of God in a deeper way so that our prayers, like Elijah’s, bring about uncommon results.

Have you approached prayer as a checklist to be completed? Try praying through, and God will join you.

Not a Chance

 

You saw me before I was born; every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. Psalm 139:16

An author is writing an action scene for his latest manuscript: “Dorothy leaped from the window and—“. Then he realizes he is thirsty, so he lays down the pen, goes to the kitchen, and gets a drink. He gazes out the window, puts away some dishes, and then returns to his work. Picking up the pen, he continues: “—landed in the bushes below.” Although an hour has passed since he began the sentence, there is no time lapse in the character’s world. When a reader reads this book, they will see no evidence of the gap, because the author exists outside the time and space of his created world.

God works with us like that. Because He exists outside the time and space of His created world, He can record every day of our lives in His book before we live one of them. He sees the end and the beginning simultaneously. Although He placed a free will within His human characters, God is sovereign over His creation. What we often call “chance” or “coincidence,” God calls purpose. Consider these passages that put seemingly random events in a different light: Isaiah 46:9-11; Proverbs 16:33; and Exodus 4:11. 

Because we are so limited by the parameters of space and time, we don’t always understand how it all fits together. But we can trust the God who sees the beginning, the middle, and the end simultaneously. He works out the events of our lives to accomplish His ultimate plan. We have His word on it.

 Because God is outside of space and time, He can attend to your needs as if you were His only child.

.