Follow God’s Plan For Your Life
We work together as partners who belong to God. You are God’s field, God’s building -- not ours.
-- 1 Corinthians 3:9
This certainly puts a different perspective on our own goals and dreams, doesn’t it? We are not our own. We belong to God. We are to spend our lives serving Him.
I can hear the chorus of “buts” loudly about now. I know God wants us to be happy. But, truthfully, aren’t we happiest when we’re doing what God has called us to do? Isn’t there a satisfaction and peace that comes from being exactly where we’re supposed to be?
Sometimes especially when it really isn’t where we ever wanted to be. That’s always been the funny part to me. How we can end up happy we’re doing something when we resisted for so long.
One man has worked in prison ministry for 21 years. He rarely misses a Tuesday night of teaching and praying and guiding men who are incarcerated in the county jail. He didn’t choose to do this. God chose him.
He laughs now when he recalls how he only meant to ask a co-worker how his experience ministering at the jail had gone. Without intending to, he found himself providing spiritual nourishment to the lost. He says he prayed for two years for God to get him out of prison ministry. Then he accepted it, and others have thrived because of it.
The reason? He submitted to God’s will. And he still does. Because some weeks he just doesn’t feel like going. And some weeks he is so stressed in his own life that he doesn’t have anything to give to anyone else. But he shows up anyway, trusting God to give him words and a heart that is open to the hurting around him.
Why do we wait until we “feel like it” to do what God has called us to do? Because we’re never going to feel like it and we’re always going to make excuses. It’s easier that way. We don’t have to leave our comfort zone. We don’t have to do something we’ve never done before. We don’t have to have compassion for others whose life experiences don’t reflect our own.
Oswald Chambers writes that we have no right to judge where we should be put. Nor should we have preconceived notions as to what God is preparing for us. We have skills we don’t realize. We have compassions we’ve yet to uncover. God has prepared us for works we never dreamed of.
We belong to God and He will use us to glorify His name. If we say yes. If we show up. If we trust His will for our lives. He will bless us in ways we can’t even imagine. All because
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