.jpg)
.jpg)
|
Home
Opinion
Pauls, Katelyn
|
My Way or God’s: Surrendering to God’s Plan for My Life
Submitted: Feb 20, 2013
By Katelyn Pauls
As my time here as a student missionary is rapidly coming to a close, I’m frantically trying to make plans and figure out what I’m going to do next year. I’ve changed since I’ve been here and I’m not going back to the US to do the same thing I was before I left. As a result, I have a lot of paperwork to do and forms to fill out to rearrange everything. It’s weighing heavily on me to get everything done, but I’m not sure what I want to do. It’s very stressful.
Because all this was on my mind, when I remembered that I had to speak for vespers I decided that I would speak on this topic. It was very encouraging! Here is what I learned and what encouraged me the most.
In Proverbs 16:9 it says, “We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.” That was encouraging for me because I have made a lot of plans in my life. Right now I have several possibilities that I’m trying to incorporate into my “plan.” But if God wants me to go somewhere, He will tell me, whether or not it fits into my plan. Further down in Proverbs 16:33 it says, “We may throw the dice, but the Lord determines how they fall.” God has a purpose and a plan and everything that we do works out according to His plan. So I’m better off just letting Him do the planning in the first place.
That sounds easy. Just let God do His thing and tag along. Much easier said than done. One of my favorite verses is Proverbs 20:24, “The Lord directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?” Things always seem so confusing. But it’s God’s plan, so why do I need to understand it? It’s a big opportunity to develop my faith. It’s God’s plan, He knows what He’s doing so I’m just going to close my eyes and follow. Like it says in Isaiah 30:21, “Your own ears will hear him. Right behind you a voice will say, ‘This is the way you should go,’ whether to the right or to the left.” I need to learn to not be afraid to trust God. He’s not going to leave me hanging. He will guide me. The hardest part is for me to know His voice. I need to have such a good relationship with Him that I can recognize His voice. Once I know that, He will tell me the way to go.
Sometimes it’s hard for me to trust God. When He doesn’t work on my timetable, I get worried and frustrated. But He tells me in Matthew 6:34, “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” He knows just how much we can handle and if He actually left me to figure it out all on my own I would be overwhelmed. Instead He tells me not to worry and to trust in Him. In one of my favorite books, it says that we should just do what God has set before us and let Him handle the rest.
The final promise that I received is what makes all of this hard work worthwhile (aside from the fact that I don’t have to worry and more!). I need to remember that God knows what is best for me. It shouldn’t be any trouble for me to give my plans to God because He knows me even better than I do and His plans will be much more satisfying for me than my own plans. In Isaiah 60, God promises Israel that He will gather all their children from the far lands and that Israel’s enemies will come bowing before them. He says that they will be the center and all the wealth in the world will come to their land. He basically promises them the world. That’s much more than anything that I could even imagine for myself.
God knows us better than we know ourselves. By placing our futures into His hands we not only free ourselves from worry, but we develop a deeper faith in God and are subject to the many blessings He has planned for us. We are in for a future more grand and fulfilling than we ever imagined.
________________________
Join in the discussion:
Log In to Post a Comment. Log In | Register
Welcome back! I've been missing your postings and wondering how your adventure was going. I can really identify with you in your process of changing plans and priorities because my year as a student missionary had the same impact on me. Looking back, I see it as a seminal and transformative year in my life that I treasure.
God speaks to us in many, often surprising and subtle ways. Keep your eyes and ears open and do not quickly reject or overlook the gentle voice of God who speaks to us through scripture, the counsel of others, events and even the desires of our hearts.
There are two dangers - to see God as a Santa-Claus that we can control with magic to do our will, and to see God as a blind watchmaker who set the machine in motion but has stepped away from the clock.
God is very active in the world, but in a very subtle way - through the Holy Spirit in human hearts. Keep in mind God might answer prayer through someone else, and you might be someone else's answer to prayer.
Interestingly, in commenting upon or summarizing Proverbs 3:5-6 this past Wednesday evening, our associate pastor said that “submission precedes direction.”
Of course we have free choice. However, God has a plan for us, and a back-up plan, and a back-up, back-up plan.
Everyone creates a god they can worship. This is abundantly clear when religion is discussed. Some are so certain of God's wishes--which usually are what they personally desire. Others revere a very stern and arbitrary god who is concerned with the minute "sins" in our lives. How is that different from those who have pagan gods?
No doubt many and most human beings create God in their own image, and submit that god to their own will. That is the central feature of paganism, and yes, many are pagans even though they call their god Yahweh, or Allah, or Jesus.
However, the true religion of Yahweh, the true essense of monotheism, is diametrically the opposite of that. That is the example of Jesus, who submitted His own will to that of the Father, even to the point of death.
I must admit, though, that I see the message of Jesus as one of liberation, rather than one of submission.
If we accept that He loves us more than we do ourselves and is infinitely wiser and more knowledgeable than we are, then submission is liberation.
If we question or reject His love and/or His wisdom and knowledge, then submission is disguised as bondage; and we have been deceived (by being wise in our own eyes).
Yes you do trust God and in trusting God you trust life and in trusting life, you trust that you will know.
For some, knowing feels like it must be a rationale process. Gathering evidence, considering implications, making choices, taking action.
Sometimes you just know.
And just knowing is not about being too lazy to engage the rationale process. Indeed, some consider such knowledge a higher-order form of knowing, a more pure form of knowing and in other circumstances a way of knowing what cannot or need not await the practicalities of rationality.
A wonderful and short (a transcription of three or four lectures as I recall) book on knowing, The Tacit Dimension, will be quite inspiring, though it is neither a spiritual or religious book. It is oddly very practical without attempting to be. http://amzn.to/ZqR5pO (I don’t expect you to fetch the book before taking your next move. Maybe not ever. And that you will come to know what you need to know as you need to know it … well, you already know that!
You inspire me and I thank you!
In study you have certainly read something in the Bible, and for the first time like "a flash of intellect" its meaning became clear or fresh to you. I don't call this an impression. Maybe that is the wrong word for me as it sounds like something stirred up from our own emotional associations--a feeling. It's all in the terminology, and that word doesn't set well with me.