I love you and there is nothing you can do about it!


God has a tremendous promises for us. Among other things, He says:


He has a plan to prosper us, not to harm us (Jer 29:11);

that all things will work for our good (Rom 8:28);

that He has prepared good works in advance for us to do (Eph 2:10); and

that we can do all things through Him who gives us strength Phi 4:13)


We know that God has a plan. We know it's a good plan. We know the plan is specifically for us. We know that the plan is do-able. So what is our response? Shall we participate in the plan, or instead say "I'll pass". As I said to my friends recently, there is only one question - "want or don't want".


If your answer is "I want", then the next step of course is to discern God's specific plan for us. For different people, this may present different challenges.


Some of us have received a promise long ago, but are still waiting for it to happen. A family member's salvation. A healing. Favour in the workplace. A spouse. What should our response be in such a case? Wait in submission.


Why? Because "God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil?" Num 23:19. What a lovely verse!


Look at Abraham. He first received God's promise when he was 75 years old (Gen 12:4). Twenty-four years later, when he was 99, God renewed his promise (Gen 17:1). Finally, finally, finally, one year later, Isaac was born (Gen 21:5). Good old Abraham waited 25 years for Isaac! But God came good in the end. So friends, if you have received God's promise, keep going - the Faithful One who promises will fulfil!


But some of us don't have this problem of waiting. We have the problem of not understanding why God's plan is the way it is. Why do we lose loved ones? Why do we have to do this uncomfortable "witnessing" business? Why is my leader/boss/father/wife/husband/wife/son/daughter so stubborn/impatient/uncaring etc. Why don't we strike lottery? Kidding (almost!). In short, why doesn't God run my life the way I want it?


Again, look at Abraham. He walked with God even when he didn't understand. He held on to God's promise of a child even when he was incredibly old. He left his home country even though he didn't know where he was going for sure. And years later, when it was time for Isaac to find a wife, he was still so certain of God's promise of a fruitful land for his family that he sternly instructed his servant not to bring Isaac back to his old homeland, but rather to bring a bride back for Isaac (Gen 24:6-8).


Friends, even when His plan doesn't seem right according to our own wisdom and our own desires, His plan is still the best plan we could ever hope to have. Stick to it!


Finally, sometimes it's not that we are waiting for a promise, or that we don't understand the promise. We don't want the promise! I don't want to have lots of friends to bless! I don't want to go on mission trips to spread the news! I don't want to complicate my work relationships with God! I don't want to multiply my time and resources for God!


Friends, Abraham had the biggest prize of all. His son Isaac, for whom he had waited 25 years. Yet Abraham chose to worship even when he couldn't afford it. He elected to sacrifice Isaac. It was relatively easy for Abraham to give away Ishmael, because Ishmael wasn't his big prize. But Abraham proved he could also do it with Isaac. What about us? We may be prepared to give away our Ishmaels. But what about our Isaacs? Let's choose to give our best to God. He is no man's debtor.


For FCBC readers, a final promise to remember. In the Bible, the diviner Balaam is remembered as a wicked man (2 Pet 2:15). Yet even he said in Numbers 23:20
(following on from Num 23:19 which is quoted above):


"I received a command to bless; he [God] has blessed, and I cannot change it."


How powerful! We have received a command to bless. God has blessed. We cannot change that!


As God's beloved saints, let's go into our homes and workplaces and demonstrate by our words and actions to our family, friends and colleagues: "I love you, and there is nothing you can do about it!"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life as a pie chart

Image
Someone told me recently about a "life exercise" in which one compiles all the stuff that makes up your life, and puts it in a pie chart.  So let's say for me, something like this. The idea is to visually demonstrate to myself that, in the event I lose one of these things, then I can see that, hey life is not so bad, that wasn't such a big deal.  Say for example, if I suffered a blown ACL, and couldn't run or play basketball any more, like this: At first blush - I'd say, hey, I still have my wife, children, parents, career, church life - so, chin up, things are not so bad.  Pretty good life visualisation tool to bring some optimism back into play! ... But what if, a month later, something happens at work, and boom, career gets sidetracked, I lose my job, or get put in cold storage somewhere, like this: Oops, now only half my life is left!  With only half of life's meaning left to me, what do I do? And what if something happens to
Read more

Bullying? Stand up!

Image
When I was a kid, I remember being bullied a fair bit.  I was small for my age, bespectacled, shy.    The teachers didn't help by putting a target on my back by making me Vice Head Prefect.  I would get my stuff just taken away from me by bigger kids, dragged out into the field to be tickled until I collapsed (much less fun than it sounds), and pushed into the storm drains.  Not all the kids were full-blown bullies of course.  But I remember some of them standing by, and politely holding my spectacles (so they wouldn't be broken) while the bullies did their work on me. Most of this stopped when I got to secondary school, where a much larger proportion of my fellow students were now just as nerdy!  And of course I grew up too.  I don't really look back on those days with any kind of animosity, because I think it never occurred to me that it was unusual.  But I do think my experience made me a bit more sympathetic about people around me who are being bullied. When you
Read more

Family AND Team

Image
I heard an interesting viewpoint this weekend. A family is not inherently a team. Hmm.  Sometimes at work, often in church, and most of the time at home, you hear people say to each other that we are family. And often, we really are. We care for each other above and beyond transactional matters.  It matters to me when my colleagues and cell group members (and of course my actual family members) go through illnesses or family issues or work challenges. I root for their success at presentations and projects and relationships. I care about what they care about, even if it has little direct impact on my own life. In a way, a family is sort of an amalgam of people who support each other in pursuit of each member's personal goals. For example, as a father, I support my children in their academic, career and ministry goals. But where they go to school, the grades they get, and the careers and ministries they build - they're really their goals, not mine.  Ditto for my role as a church
Read more