How often do your plans change?

The reality of Plans

There have been many times over the years that my plans have changed. From events I planned to go to that I had something come up, to future plans being dead in the water because of factors out of my control, to plans being put on hold because something rendered me unable to pursue it for now- or maybe ever. I have buried more people than most at my age, I have watched people I thought would be part of my life forever walk out of my life on their own choice, I have watched health problems steal people I love without ending their life, I have lived things you never plan to have to live through. 

The month of August has been an accumulation of those things once again. At the beginning of the month we got a phone call that will change our family’s  lives forever. My grandfather had died, that meant we would bury both my grandfathers in a span of nine months. On the same day we received news that another family member had been given six weeks to live. A family friend’s funeral was scheduled for the day after my grandfather died. This was just in the first week of August and it wasn’t even everything that went wrong that week. Just as everything was starting to settle down from the funerals and usual August plans, another blow was dealt. Less than a week after all of the above concluded we got a prayer chain message. One of my former classmates had been in a car wreck and was in the ICU. The next morning, a week after my grandfather’s service, we found out she was brain dead and they were in the process of lining up organ recipients. Her and I had been extremely close when we were little but after our lives took different on paths in later elementary school we had gone our separate ways. Her service was this week, I didn’t go to the service as I was avoiding situations that could cause drama but I did go to the visitation. I hugged her mom as she sobbed, and visited with her grandfather as though no time had passed since I was going to his house with her all the time. You never plan to bury a classmate less than two years after you graduated. 

My life has gone very differently from how it was planned. There have been many other plans that never happened and things that were never planned that did happen.

The thing is in the moment when plans change it is the easiest thing ever to not see God moving in those changes, especially when those changes aren’t immediately perceived as being for the better. 

Plans and a Bible

When was the last time you read a Bible story and considered that the story line was likely not what the people in it had planned on? If you’re anything like me then the answer is probably never, at least that you hadn’t even considered the thought until this moment. 

Plan changes are usually viewed as an inconvenience not a blessing or a gift. I mean I get it, never once have I found it to be a gift that I am unable to have the career I planned on since I was little, I never once thought it was a blessing that I became chronically ill. 

But there are gifts in plan changes we never saw coming. I never thought that I would consider my high school athletic career being cut short a gift, but because of that I met my best friend. My best friend never expected that she would be expecting before she’d even been married a year, but now she says her daughter is the greatest unplanned blessing. Sometimes the blessings are obvious in the time after the plan change, but others we struggle to see. 

I am fairly certain it wasn’t Mary or Martha’s plan for Jesus to delay in coming to them. But in that they got to witness one of the greatest miracles Jesus ever performed. I know the disciples didn’t plan on Jesus dying or on Him rising again. But because God doesn’t follow our plans, they walked with the savior of the world and were equipped through Him to spread the word of Him, through a world that was told they were crazy liars. 

Our world

We live in a world where we are taught every move has to be calculated and make sense. We are taught meticulous planning is required for every step. We are taught it has to make sense, that stepping out without a checklist plan is irresponsible and a horrible idea. We are conditioned to analyze away the unknowns. 

We are so conditioned to analyze and calculate each step, but at what cost. 

Don’t Calculate, Move

God asks us to move. Then we sit and say in a minute God, I have to run the numbers, I have to make a plan, I have to justify this to everyone else. Before we know it God has asked us to move but we’re stuck in a grid lock. There’s too many things not checking out, too many variables, too many problems. But with God it doesn’t have to make sense. 

We try to manage God’s plan in our lives. But they don’t work, they don’t check out, they seem impossible, we can’t comprehend how we are supposed to do them. 

We settle into plans that are safe. Plans that the world approves of. We settle in where the numbers add up in our favor, where we can do things the “right” way, the way we’re told, where we color inside the lines of the world’s rulebook. We stay where we can touch so we don’t have to worry about sinking even in the calm. We stay where we think we are safe from storms. 

God calls us to the hard and what seems impossible. He wants to speak in our lives. He wants to provide. He puts walls and trenches in our paths to redirect us and let us know He’s here in the impossible, to teach us to rely on Him. He calls to us to get out of our safe little boats. But when we’re called to get out of the boat the world tells us the only thing out there is danger, we are told that we will ruin everything if we bail over the side, afterall the boat is known and safe. 

We never plan to get out of the boat into the waves, that takes faith not planning. Instead we plan and try to build a bridge so that we never have to worry about getting wet, so that even the storm waves barely reach us.

Final Questions

What boat is God calling you out of? 

What bridge are you building instead of trusting?

How can you bail over the side today?

#riatasripple