How many of you out there reading this, love to know exactly what is going to happen next in your lives? Your day is so organized that you can do it with your eyes closed, with no passion or enthusiasm. But that is how you like it, no surprises. If you are like me, I would probably say you are a bit of a control freak. I like a good plan. I don’t really like it when as I am walking out the door of the house to go do something that is part of my routine, for my wife to say to me “Honey, could you stop at the store and get me a few things?” You see, that wasn’t part of my plan.
As someone who has decided to follow Jesus, this is somewhat of a problem. I want to know whether or not what I am doing is going to succeed and if I don’t add anything new than I know what the result of my day is going to be. But if I have read my Bible correctly, that is not exactly how God works. The prophet Isaiah wrote that His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts, but that they are far above ours. Let’s check His ways. In Genesis the Lord told Abram to go to a land that He would show him – a land that was foreign to him. He also told Noah to build an ark, a big boat made of gopher wood, funny thing is, that it had never rained before. Do you see a pattern?
Jesus continued this by saying to some fishermen “Come Follow Me!” – drop everything (your family, your livelihood, your friends) because I have something for you that you could never imagine. Does it sound like the people of old who were invited to the story of redemption knew what was going to happen tomorrow?
Now I am not saying that making plans is stupid and we should just live willy nilly. I am suggesting that maybe we exclude or even handcuff God by planning too much. We plan our worship services to end on time, our fellowship dinners to promote unity, our revivals so that we hope that people will begin to do what they already should be doing, as if He needs to be on our time schedule.
My favorite parts of the Bible are when Jesus interacted with people. None of these instances were staged. Each and every one of them happened as He was walking along the way. There was His encounter with Zacchaeus in Luke, the crazy man from Mark chapter five, the two blind men and especially the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus told her that if she drank the water He gave her, she would never thirst. A fountain of water springing up into everlasting life would be hers. Picture this, if I am His child – submitted to His Spirit – then I have something that is continuously flowing in me and out of me. As I have been praying and asking for God’s direction for my life, it is my desire that I don’t get caught up on knowing how everything is going to work out. If I know this, then do I even need to have faith? I am trusting that His Spirit will guide me and whatever happens will ultimately glorify Him.
Please let it flow, for without faith it is impossible to please God!
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