Sometimes even the best laid out plans don’t work out the way we want them to. Think about your dreams as a child as to what you thought you would grow up to be. You dreamed about being a doctor, fireman, policeman, or other jobs and you planned it out. This plan became your plan A and how you wanted to live your life. You spent time deciding how you would accomplish it, but things got in the way and it just didn’t work out and now your living plan B. Sometimes we can look at our plans that have crumbled before us and it feels like failure. However that doesn’t mean that God is absent in your struggles for your plans. So many times Plan “B” is the plan that God has for us and we don’t even know it.
God is in control of us if we allow him to be and that is the biggest fear for most of us. Giving up the control and the power we have for our own lives. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had a burning bush that we used to talked to God. You would wake up, pour a cup of coffee, step out onto my porch, look to the left and say, “So what’s on the agenda for today Lord?” The bush in the planter would light up, and God would give you your list complete with boxes for checking upon completion.
What I have begun to realize is that he did give me and you a burning bush, We just can’t see the bush through the forest. Too many things, are obscuring our view and confusing our hearing, but the bush was there all along. Things like bills, homework, practice, and test to study for block Our hearing. Then add meetings, entertainment, other commitments, and our day is full enough without the bush! When a crisis strips us, the tree’s get cleared and We can see the bush. When are we going to Wake up and discover that Our career experiences, schooling, and training are useless to use unless we learn how to thin the trees. One thing I do know, is that God is in the business of writing our resumes. And he makes sure that we have the experience and expertise required to fulfill the purpose of His will, not ours…
Let’s answer these three questions:
Who’s in control? What do we have to offer? Who needs our help?
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Blurry Vision
A nice Saturday Morning my family and I were all packed in the car headed out on a trip. We had been gone from the house a total of 5 minutes and I already felt as if this trip was going to be a success. The kids were all buckled in and the bags were all packed and Lori and I felt confident that we had not forgotten a thing we needed for this 4 day mini-vacation (Thank is a success within itself). We had planned the trip, prepared ourselves and the kids, and our vision was clear we were going to have a blast. Three seconds latter things changed. We were driving directly in the sun and I made the mistake of pushing the windshield wiper fluid button. You wouldn’t think something as harmless windshield cleaner would be a problem. The window was nasty and I wanted to be able to see better and I thought this was my best option. Little did I know that window cleaning fluid and direct sunlight just don’t mix and my vision for the road suddenly became so distorted that I had to bring the car to a complete halt. As I was drying the window off on the side of the road and I realized that even though we had a vision of what the trip was to be and had spent time planning and preparing, right then and there we could have had a wreck and everything would have changed. I know my vision is important but at that moment having the right vision meant everything.
Look at Nehemiah 1 and we can find some answer about what we can do when we lose God’s vision for our lives. There's a great prayer there that God was so impressed with that He put it in the Bible. And it's a real-life model of what the ultimate purpose of prayer is. Obviously, our purpose is to get whatever we're praying about, but God's purpose is to give us His vision.
Nehemiah has a heavy burden on his heart. It's the news that God's people and God's city are a mess. And it drives him to his knees for weeks of praying about it. I don't know what's weighing heavy on your heart right now, but I hope it's driven you to your knees. Maybe like Nehemiah, you feel powerless to solve this one. Then you'll be interested in how he ends up praying after initially focusing on the situation. Praying about the situation changes how he looks at almost everything. After heavy duty praying, he's seeing things much more clearly - through God's vision. And that's what the ultimate purpose of praying is, not getting an answer, but getting God's perspective - which often leads to the answer.
It's that burden on your heart that gets you to praying. But if you will persist before God, you will notice your vision starting to clear up. The Divine Ophthalmologist will be giving you glasses to see Him, and yourself, and the people around you, and the real issues, and your next step as you've never seen them before. When you go to your knees, you get God's glasses. And suddenly, things look so much clearer!
In Him,
Joe
Look at Nehemiah 1 and we can find some answer about what we can do when we lose God’s vision for our lives. There's a great prayer there that God was so impressed with that He put it in the Bible. And it's a real-life model of what the ultimate purpose of prayer is. Obviously, our purpose is to get whatever we're praying about, but God's purpose is to give us His vision.
Nehemiah has a heavy burden on his heart. It's the news that God's people and God's city are a mess. And it drives him to his knees for weeks of praying about it. I don't know what's weighing heavy on your heart right now, but I hope it's driven you to your knees. Maybe like Nehemiah, you feel powerless to solve this one. Then you'll be interested in how he ends up praying after initially focusing on the situation. Praying about the situation changes how he looks at almost everything. After heavy duty praying, he's seeing things much more clearly - through God's vision. And that's what the ultimate purpose of praying is, not getting an answer, but getting God's perspective - which often leads to the answer.
It's that burden on your heart that gets you to praying. But if you will persist before God, you will notice your vision starting to clear up. The Divine Ophthalmologist will be giving you glasses to see Him, and yourself, and the people around you, and the real issues, and your next step as you've never seen them before. When you go to your knees, you get God's glasses. And suddenly, things look so much clearer!
In Him,
Joe
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