What do you do when you want something desperately? Take control? Me too. The problem with this habit is I could be missing out on what God is really trying to do in my life while I’m walking aimlessly by myself.
Many of us agonize over the thought that we have made terrible mistakes, and as a result, forfeited God’s best for our lives. This raises the question: is it possible to miss out on what God is doing in and around us, and somehow move through our lives outside of God’s good plan for us?
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God’s sovereign plan is His master plan that He designed from the beginning. This plan will always happen. However, His specific plan for us—which is His designated, assigned, unique, and purposeful plan—might not always happen. The reason His specific plan for us does not always happen is because, as people, we all have the ability to choose whether we walk with Him in it or not.
Ephesians 1:11 says “all things are done according to God’s plan and decision; and God chose us to be His own people in union with Christ because of His own purpose, based on what he had decided from the very beginning.”
As the Scripture states, “He chose us to be His own people in union with Him” with the intention to help complete His greater purpose, His sovereign plan. He desires for us to partner with Him to accomplish His plan for His heavenly purposes. But we have to choose to accept the call.
God’s specific plan is His purpose for you specifically. When I say specific, I mean something that only you can do for His Kingdom. Something that He designed for you to fulfill.
It’s the reason He made you, for a purpose, as “He is the potter, we are the clay” (Isaiah 45:9).
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When God created man, He created him with a specific purpose to fulfill. A work to accomplish.
God’s purpose and plan for Adam was to have dominion over the creatures God had made. Adam began fulfilling that purpose by naming the animals in Genesis 1:19.
Another part of God’s plan and work for Adam was the care of the Garden of Eden, as Genesis 2:15 says “the Lord God took the man, put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” God created Adam with a purpose. God’s sovereign plan was still accomplished, as He is in control. But perhaps it would have been done another way had Adam not been disobedient and strayed from God’s plan.
Just like Adam, God may have you exactly where He wants for this season in your life. We have a choice due to our free will to continue in our God-given purpose, or walk in our own way as Adam did.
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There is a purpose for every season.
Maybe you are in a season of staying at home with your young children. What if your purpose for this season is solely to be the best example and anchor for your household, preparing you for the season ahead?
Don’t rush the season you are in and miss what God is doing in your life. Some seasons require Him to equip and strengthen you for what’s to come. We know David was one day meant to be King. We also know He would kill a giant one day. But before those seasons began, he spent a season as a shepherd boy watching over sheep, killing only lions and bears (1 Samuel 17:34-37). This season was before he ever faced the giant, Goliath, and was crowned King.
If King David tried to rush to the next season, he may have missed what God was trying to do in his current season, ultimately preparing him for the coming one.
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Our Father is so gracious, that when we do walk away, and perhaps miss part of what He intended to do in our lives, He offers up forgiveness and welcomes us with open arms when we repent. And the beauty in that is, God promises us in Romans 8:28 that “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”
It’s never too late, you are never too far gone, where you can’t get back on the path God had for you and receive what He wants to do in your life. Look at the apostle Paul. He was a murder, and a murder of Christians, nonetheless. But God used Him in a mighty way. God turned Paul’s bad into good. None of his years were lost years.
God’s promises remain true to us today. Even if you made a decision outside of God’s will to get to where you are, be encouraged—you can still wholeheartedly and devotedly get back on the path God has for you, where can experience what He wants to do in your life. He’ll use that off-the-beaten-path for His good.
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How many of us have made a decision believing it to be God’s will, only to have the wheels come off somewhere down the road?
Perhaps God told you to move across the country for your husband’s job opportunity, but then the moment you get there, the company goes out of business and the job is lost. Hear me when I say this: God’s will doesn’t need temporal things like success, personal happiness, and good results to confirm that our decision was in line with God’s will.
Do you ever wonder if some of that is by God’s design?
Don’t miss what God is doing in your life because you think it’s supposed to look differently.
Maybe your marriage was on shaky ground during this time, and a job loss was what drew you and your husband together to restore your marriage back to a solid foundation. Or perhaps the job loss was the prompting for your husband to now step into God’s special purpose for your family of starting his own company with God’s favor and blessing all over it. Had the job not been lost, perhaps fear would have kept him in a secure job rather than his unique purpose.
What God is doing in your life may not always look the way you expect it to, but God is always working behind the scenes. He is still doing things in your life even if it looks different than what you expected. Jesus promises this in John 5:17, “My Father is always working, and so am I.” Just because you don’t see it, He never stops working.
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1. Align your heart with God’s will: Our hearts need to be one of “accomplishing His will, and not our own” (Matthew 6:10). In doing this, we are able to partner with Him and His purposes. We won’t live life making decisions our way. Rather, our prayers and hearts will be in alignment with God so we can rest assured He is leading us, and we are not missing out on what He is doing.
2. Realize your own inability to make sound decisions: I can’t tell you how many decisions I’ve made that were far from wise. It’s important for us to realize our weakness, so we can depend on our strong God, relying on His wisdom, and not our own. For, “God’s ways are higher than our ways, His thoughts are higher than our thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8).
3. Stay in His word: Psalm 119:105 says “your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.” Imagine yourself in a dark movie theater trying to find your seats. Have you ever noticed the lights along the floor illuminating your steps back to your seat? In the same way, the Bible [the word of God] is a lamp that lights our path each step we take. We must stay in His word to never miss what God is doing in our lives.
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God doesn’t want us to miss out on what He’s doing. He has a sovereign plan. And in that plan, He has a unique purpose designed specifically for you. He wants to partner with you to help Him accomplish His heavenly purposes here on earth. He did it with many of the men and women who went before us, and He wants to do it with us too.
It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve walked away from Him. It’s never too late to choose to participate in what God is doing in your life. He will turn even the bad into good for His purpose. It might not look like what you expected, but He’s working.
Align your will with His, ask Him for wisdom where you lack, and stay in His word to help navigate you in His purpose so you never miss out on what God is doing in your life. Then watch Him in what He does, being confident that “he who begun a good work in you, will [continue] to perfect and complete it.” (Philippians 1:6)
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