What If God Has Other Plans?

plansHow’s life going for you? Everything working out the way you planned?

Or not?

Funny how the road we travel can be so different from the one we mapped out. Detours lead us in unexpected directions. The scenery may be nothing like what we envisioned. Even our destination changes—because the journey is changing us.

Is that really a surprise? After all, life is a road under constant construction. Only, unlike a real highway, it takes its own course. We plan to go here, but we wind up there. We plan to do this, but life tosses in that. We plan, but . . .

What if God has other plans?

While you lay the groundwork for your kingdom—education, work, possessions, relationships, marriage, and so on—God is intent on building his kingdom more deeply into and through your life. The two aren’t necessarily in conflict, so don’t let that thought alarm you. It’s a good, very Book-of-Proverbs thing to make plans rather than live haphazardly. Just remember, God has his own priorities. His ultimate interest isn’t in what you do, what you acquire, or what you accomplish. It’s in whom you become.

God Had Other Ideas

When I first became a disciple of Jesus in my early twenties—when he so changed me and filled me with his Spirit that my passion for him was a consuming fire—I was certain I knew his plan for my life. He had given me the gift of music, and he would surely use it in a big way. I would have a “mighty ministry.” I would do great things for God. My path to high impact for Jesus and his kingdom seemed clear, straight, and smooth.

My confident young faith left no place for tears, or loss, or heartbreak. I hadn’t factored in questioning, or confusion, or struggle, or loneliness, or broken dreams, or the results of my own naivete and bad choices. They all came just the same, over the years and the decades. But so did occasional, remarkable affirmations that my Lord loved me and knew my address in life. Through the best and the worst, he was with me, just as he is with me now. He has never let me go. He has cared for me, kept my boat afloat through the storms, bid me to walk on water, placed me in the company of humble kings and queens in his kingdom, and given me grand, wild views lit by a joyous sunshine I’d never have known had life turned out according to my expectations. Above all, he has brought me to know him—his heart, his character, his companionship, who he really is. I wouldn’t trade those things for anything else.

Life is the chisel God uses to shape the character of his Son in us. It’s about coming to look more and more like Jesus. The apostle Paul put it like this:

Those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” (Romans 8:29)

Our heavenly Father is committed to that goal because he knows that in it lie true freedom and joy, life and abundance, our best and highest. But he’s not above messing with our plans in the process.

God’s Plan for Our Plans

I think the balance is this: we’re to commit our endeavors to the Lord and work diligently toward them but not hold them so tightly that we can’t let go. James, not one to mince words, writes,

Listen carefully, those of you who make your plans and say, “We are traveling to this city in the next few days. We’ll stay there for one year while our business explodes and revenue is up.” The reality is you have no idea where your life will take you tomorrow. You are like a mist that appears one moment and then vanishes another. It would be best to say, “If it is the Lord’s will and we live long enough, we hope to do this project or pursue that dream.” (James 4:13–15 VOICE)

That’s perspective. That’s humility. That, if you will, is reality.

Be assured that your life is imbued with a significance that transcends anything you can engineer on your own. You might live to be a hundred; you could be gone tomorrow. Regardless, God has plans for you that include your vision for your life but that will also interrupt it, redirect it, and in everything prove far greater and better than you can grasp. For God is aligning the growth of your kingdom with the expansion of his. You may not see all the results this side of eternity; in fact, the best any of us get are mere glimpses. That is why faith is so important.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
(Isaiah 55:8–9)

Yet from there, God declares where his thoughts lead. And his words to ancient Israel through the prophet Isaiah reveal his heart toward you. Whatever the road you’re on is like today, whether smooth or pockmarked, straight or twisting, fulfilling or disappointing, if your heart belongs to Jesus, his plans for you are sure and your destiny is secure.

“You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace. . . .
Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the LORD’s renown,
for an everlasting sign,
that will endure forever.”
(Isaiah 55:9, 12–13)

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What If God Is a Shepherd?

jesus christ the tender shepherd ambrose dudleyHow good is your imagination? Let’s find out: imagine you’re a sheep. A wooly, four-footed critter, hanging out in a high-country meadow with ninety-nine other sheep all preoccupied, like you, with munching grass. Your shepherd always leads you to the best, and the stuff on this hillside is primo.

But hey, what’s that? Over by those rock outcroppings on the edge of the pasture? More grass, and it looks great. You go to check it out.

It’s excellent. And now you see more, so off you wander, meandering up increasingly steep slopes past big boulders and large trees and through thickets, enticed by thoughts of more lush, undiscovered forage. The grass is actually getting sparser with every step, but still you persist, following your nose, wandering and wandering and wandering, until by and by a thought pops into your fuzzy little head:

Hey, where is everybody?

Panic-stricken—sheep excel at panic—you bolt off in what you hope is the direction you came from. An hour later, reality sinks in. You haven’t a clue where you are. The sun is lowering behind the peaks. And this is a horrible place for a sheep to be lost. There are cougars and bears and . . . and coyotes. Yes, coyotes—like those three trotting toward you past that juniper, eyeballing you and licking their chops. Oh no! Your wooly little knees start to knock.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, there’s your shepherd. Leaping off a rock, he starts cracking coyote skulls with his rod until, yelping in terror and disappointed rage, your would-be attackers race off into the trees. Your shepherd walks up to you, gazes at you for a second with a look of relief and gladness that he’s found you, then picks you up, lays you across his shoulder, and carries you safely back to the flock.

He came for you. You. He left your ninety-nine comrades there in the pasture to come scouring the wild hillsides searching for foolish, wandering, terrified you. You’re that valuable. You matter that much to him.

What if that’s how God sees you? What if that’s what he does in your life?

What if God is a shepherd—your shepherd?

Among the many ways God is portrayed in Scripture, the image of a shepherd is persistent, gentle, and reassuring. Jacob spoke of “the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day” (Genesis 48:15). Psalm 80 calls God the Shepherd of Israel (v.1). David, the shepherd-king, begins the beloved Twenty-Third Psalm by declaring, “The Lord is my shepherd.”

And Jesus, the Son of David, surely had his earthly ancestor’s psalm in mind, with all the care, gentleness, provision, guidance, and protection it describes, when he called himself the Good Shepherd. Our Lord knows his sheep, and they know him, and he’ll lay down his life for them. Indeed, he has done so.

What do the qualities of a shepherd tell us about God and how he relates to you and me? Entire books have been written on the subject,3 but here, I think, is the sum of it: God is watchful, involved, and devoted. He cares for us at all times. That doesn’t mean we won’t experience hardship and grief; “In the world you will have tribulation,” Jesus assured his disciples, and we are no exception. It does mean, though, that our Shepherd is there, present, the One who will never leave nor forsake us. In all things, through the best and worst of days, we live our lives under his watchful care.

To the brokenhearted, the abused, those wounded by the world, he is gentle and kind.

He makes us lie down in green pastures.He leads us beside cool waters.He restores our soul.

Our Shepherd knows us thoroughly and sees us deeply. The rod of his protection and the staff of his guidance are a profound reassurance and comfort. For those who are humble in heart, his ever-watchful eye is that of a healer and a lover of the sheep, so that, like David, we too can say,

Surely goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives,and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.


2 See John 10:14–15.3
Tim Keller’s bestseller, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, is a classic

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What If God Is a Rock?

And who is a rock, except our God?
(Psalm 18:31)



RocksInMistThose words come down to us through the centuries from a man who knew what it meant to trust God as if his life depended on it—because it did, constantly.

From his youth guarding his father’s sheep against fierce predators, to bloody combat as a warrior in Israel’s military, to life as a fugitive, hounded through the wilderness by a madman and his army, David knew empirically that God upheld him. On into his silver years as Israel’s king, David lived a life marked by conflict and marred by his own sins. Through it all, God was David’s rock—his only rock. His sole stability when the world around him was shaking.

When you think of a David kind of rock, think big. Think of a flinty summit perched high above the surrounding landscape, with a commanding view in every direction. Think of a craggy mountain pitted with caves, like the cave of Adullam, where David and his soldiers hid from Saul’s pursuing army (1 Samuel 22:1). Think of rugged Mount Sinai, or of the Half Dome at Yosemite, or of . . .

Well, what do you think of when you think of a rock?

What words come to mind?

How about enduring. Unchanging. Unmoving. Not merely strong but stronger than. Stronger than what? Everything else. Drive a locomotive into the Half Dome and guess which one will come out the winner.

A rock is dependable, here today as in ages past and not going anywhere in the future. You can count on a rock to be there. That’s the kind of rock God is—the Rock, for you and me just as surely he was for David.

This writing’s opening verse from Psalm 18 says much about God in few words, but it by no means tells all. Many other Psalms resound with David’s joyous praise of his Rock, companied with words such as fortress, high tower, strength, and deliverer that testify to God’s reliability and salvation. For instance:


He only is my rock and my salvation;
He is my defense;
I shall not be moved.
(Psalm 62:6)

In the time of trouble
He shall hide me in His pavilion;
In the secret place of His tabernacle
He shall hide me;
He shall set me high upon a rock.
(Psalm 27:5)


And one of my favorites, Psalm 18:2:

The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer;
My God, my strength, in whom I will trust;
My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.



Today, in the midst of a violently shaking world, don’t you long for stable ground to root your life in? Jesus compared those who practice his teachings to a homebuilder who anchored his house on a rock. “The rain descended,” Jesus said, and “the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock” (Matthew 7:25).

In simple words, he was telling his listeners, “Do what I say and you’ll withstand the worst life can throw at you.”

Does that not smack of audacity? Not when the speaker is the Son of God. Not when his words reflect the enduring character of the Rock. Jesus’s parable is about far more than “Do it because I said.” It is an invitation to align our thinking and our ways with who God is and how he says life works.

Yeah, but . . . cancer. Covid 19. Auto accidents. Divorce. Mental illness. The death of a child. Financial ruin. Homelessness.

Yes, I know. God gave us tear ducts because he knew we’d need them. I’ve used mine plenty, and I’m sure you have too. So did David, and so, for that matter, did Jesus. Faith is not blithe denial of the floods and winds or of pain and sorrow. They’re as real as can be—Jesus wouldn’t have told his parable otherwise. But God is also real, the unseen rock who upholds us when we cleave to him and his ways.

When Moses struck the rock in the wilderness, water gushed forth to slake the thirst of God’s people (see Exodus 17:1–7). God provided. But he did so amid the austerity of the dessert, “that great and terrible wilderness in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water . . . that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end” (Deuteronomy 8:15–16, my emphasis).

That is what we’re to set our vision on: God’s good for us in the end. The Rock on which we build our lives is our surety that when Satan attacks us, when life hits hard, when the millrace beats against the things we love, that our faith, our calling in this world, and our destiny in the next will emerge victorious when the waters subside.

We are not our own sure foundation. We do not stand by our own strength. We are grounded on something—on Someone—far stronger. Like David, we cry,

“Lead me to the rock that is higher than I” (Psalm 61:2).

God is that Rock.
In him we trust. On him we fix our hearts.
Him, by his grace, we love and pursue.
And on him, with eyes turned upward, we build our lives.

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What If God Is a Storyteller?

StorytellerHeavenly portents, weather disasters, wars among the nations, catastrophic earthquakes . . . signs of imminent apocalypse? Actually, they’re the setting for When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: a true account of the year 1811, whose extraordinary events in the US culminated in the great New Madrid earthquakes. The quakes, centered in the boot heel of Missouri, were so catastrophic that one of them temporarily reversed the flow of the mighty Mississippi River.

What a great book of great stories!—of heroes, villains, and red-handed deeds; of bold exploits, underhanded treachery, and the romantic beauty and calamitous power of nature.

We could be talking about the Bible. Spanning history from its dawn to its resolution, the Good Book is alive with fascinating characters and compelling tales that weave a grand metanarrative of creation, fall, and redemption. Shepherds and farmers are transformed into warriors, kings, poets, and prophets. Prisoners ascend to royalty, and royalty falls into captivity. Even the bewildering complexities of the Mosaic law and the deep theology of Paul lie within the context of larger stories that bring them to life.

Jesus himself, when he wanted to impart the secrets of heaven to his disciples, told them stories. God’s kingdom, he said, is like a mustard seed, a lost gold coin, a shepherd’s search for a wayward sheep. Parables drawn from the disciples’ everyday world helped them understand heaven’s invisible realities. And the true accounts of Jesus’s teachings, miracles, life, death, resurrection, and coming return—the Gospels—constitute the greatest story of all, of which all other stories are a part.

What if God is a storyteller?

And what if your own story is woven—together with countless other stories, present, past, and future—into his story?

Your life is a tale in the process of telling—and if you belong to Jesus, it will continue beyond the ages. For he is “the author and perfecter of [your] faith” (Hebrews 12:2 WEB).

Practically speaking, the Lord doesn’t operate in your life apart from you. You are his coauthor. But he is the one who initiates and completes, the Alpha and Omega, the first letter and the final period. You live your life, you respond to its events, but he fits it all together into a story only he knows how to tell. It’s a great comfort to know that whatever your life may look like, the One who loves you most has the final word on its true significance and your eternity. Who you are and who you are becoming is not up to you alone; the mighty, unseen Author is with you. And the ink with which you write, as his coauthor, is a combination of your choices and his grace that empowers you to write well. As you write, he is writing with you. Indeed, you are his story, created to express, as only you can, something unique about his heart, his character, his strength, his will, his redemptive love.

Every story includes conflict, something to reach for and something to overcome. The main characters we find compelling are those who struggle—not just against outward opposition but also with themselves. Like us, they fall, and not just once. But they always rise, and ultimately, they triumph.

David, through his faith, slew Goliath but succumbed, through his lust, to Bathsheba. Peter walked on the waves, saw Jesus transfigured on the mountaintop, and yet denied him when push came to shove. Both men broke on the rocks of their own tragic, all-too-human weaknesses. But each, in his own way, ultimately took his sin to God. No hiding, no games, but humble, brokenhearted honesty. So it was that God called David “a man after my own heart” (Acts 13:22). So it was that Peter rose from the ashes to become Christ’s fearless, outspoken leader of the first-century church.

We love these men’s stories because they give us hope—for David and Peter are no different from us. It’s in their weakness that God’s mercy, kindness, and power are revealed. Their stories are of men on a journey toward becoming fully themselves—the men God created them to be. So too the chronically discarded Samaritan woman at the well, and the prostitute (that’s what she was, you know) who poured perfume on Jesus’s feet. Their stories we love as well, not because of either woman’s holiness but because of her humanity and her life-changing encounter with her Author.

So take hope and take courage. You too are a story being written by the Master Storyteller, who loves you, is on your side, and is able to weave even the darkest passages of your life into a tale of far greater and enduring glory.




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What If God Could Calm Your Deepest Fear?


I have a better question: What if your deepest fear isn’t deep enough?

When my kids were little, we lived on a busy street. Semi-trucks
rumbled down our four-lane road, shaking our house. I pointed to a
crack in our driveway and told my toddlers that they may never cross it
for any reason. If a ball bounces beyond it, let it go. Don’t be afraid of
losing your ball. Fear the trucks.

What is your deepest fear? Losing your marriage, your business, your
house, your health, your friend, your good name? These are real and
important fears. They matter, a lot.
The longer we live, the more balls we accumulate, and the more likely
one or more will bounce into the street. When that happens, tell God
about it. He cares about what we care about. Each ball is important to
him.
But remember that one day we will lose all of our balls. We will die
alone, with nothing but the God we have lived for. Make sure it’s the
right one. Make sure it’s Jesus.

Jesus said the only thing we should fear is hell (Matt 10:28). Then he
removed that fear when he died on the cross. Jesus went to hell so we
don’t have to. He has calmed your greatest fear. Everything else is
child’s play.

 

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