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Tuesday, February 5, 2013

BEST LAID PLANS

 
As many of you know, reading Oswald Chambers’ daily devotional generally doesn’t lull a person into a happy, peaceful mode of solemnity. Rather, his words charge forth within your brain, moving at locomotive speed into your heart and causing painful bouts of "OK, I’ll work on that. . . . Help!"

But this morning's devotional hit a happy chord in me because it resonated with a refrigerator prayer I had up all last year. A refrigerator prayer? You know. The ones that are so weighty they are set in place of utmost importance in our home—the door of our fridge.

I had taken down that prayer at the first of the year—thinking perhaps I knew it well enough no longer to need its reminder.

But several blog posts and scriptures and now Oswald have brought it back to mind. My refrigerator prayer was this:

God, please fill me with excited expectation for what you have planned. Amen.

Today, Oswald reminded us to "live in expectancy that God will show up" but not necessarily as you would assume He would.

Recently a Yiddish axiom on Facebook got me thinking: If you want to make God laugh, just tell Him your plans.

Too often we make plans and ask God to bless them. Sometimes He does because—coincidentally—our plans also happen to be His plans. But often, we make plans and struggle when obstacles thwart them. 

Our plan may be good. Our plan may be well designed. We may work hard to achieve it. Our plan may even be godly and intended to glorify God.

But it just may not be His plan.

Much better to let God do the planning and then jump on His train as He chug-a-chugs forward to successful completion.

And while we’re on the train, we need to expect God to show up. He may not be the engineer. He may not be the conductor. He might be the little old lady sitting in seat 12 B of car 15.

Or the guy swinging the lantern in the caboose.

Or the man on the platform selling snacks as we wait for the rest of the passengers to board.

"Live in expectancy that God will show up."

I think I’ll stick my prayer back up on the fridge.

PRAYER: Heavenly Father, please fill me with excited expectation at what you have planned. Amen.  

WHAT ABOUT YOU? Do you recall a time when your best plans—plans you created to glorify God—turned out not to be God’s plan after all?

4 comments:

Pam B. said...

My plans have not been God's plans and it has taken time to let go, but I trust God that I am better off for it. I trust He knows me better than I know myself therefore, I want the path He has set for me. I praise Him for all His blessings He showers on me.

From Carols Quill said...

@ Pam - I so love your prayer about God's best path for you. Praying scripture need not be a heavy process; a word or two and God recognizes that you're praying His promises back to Him. Lovely.

chris said...

lol... yea, God's really good at changing my plans. I have been more laid back about it whenever it does happen. I LOVE your refrigerator prayer! I would call that one my "how to cope" prayer :-)

From Carols Quill said...

@ Chris - laid back is a good idea in "planning." LOL I try winging it but usually find I don't actually have wings.