Whose Plan is it Anyway?
I’ve really enjoyed the make room series, I hope you all have too. Thank you to all those who helped put it together. Making room sometimes means giving up something which is of clear benefit to other people and which you enjoy. That may be hard enough. But it can be even harder if you were sure it was part of God’s plan. Let me give an example from my own experience.
I had a particular job once which I really enjoyed, and if you forgive me for saying, I was actually quite good at too. Moreover, the job had a strong purpose, and my role and how it contributed to the ‘national good’ was very clear. However, my boss’s boss turned up one day and said “we are moving you John”. However, I didn’t want to move and my immediate boss and my staff, didn’t want me to move either.
However, despite my significant reservations, I was transferred to the new role. Its purpose wasn’t at all clear, the job was a complete muddle, and the outcomes of the overall team seemed to make little sense. I missed my old team, and the new team seemed hard to work with. I even took a pay cut although it was supposedly a promotion. Fiona rightly questioned what I was doing. Why take a pay cut for something you don’t enjoy and where the outcome for both you and the organisation is really unclear?
Putting down the old role was really hard. I handed it over to somebody really competent which was good, but I really missed the opportunity to continue in it myself as I felt my move was premature. Even for my relatively fledgling Christian faith at the time, I felt sure God was in my old role and that he still wanted me to do it. I was wrong… He wanted me to move on.
It was some two years before I was clear in my mind why I had been moved, and that my skills needed to be developed in a different place for a different reason. God knew beforehand of course! I was just impatient, a slow learner and rather arrogant.
Discerning what is God’s plan for next stage can be a real challenge, and I will admit it’s one I can still struggle with. In fact if I’m honest I’m personally dealing with a couple of examples at the moment (I will save those for a blog another day!) Putting down things which are fruitful and which you undertook with God’s blessing is hard!
I’m still learning about this. But I have three things, three P’s, to help:
- Prayer
- Plan
- Patience
Prayer is key. How can we discern God’s plan if we don’t hear his whisper and talk to him about our worries and thoughts in that? He loves us and won’t have a bad plan for us…
Plan. Is it your plan or is it God’s? If it was God’s plan at the outset, is it still part of His plan now, as His plans often (always) have multiple stages. Are you listening or just stuck in one part of the plan? Are you allowing His plan to develop you, or are you resistant?
Patience. I’m not the most patient of men sadly, and that’s made me question things when I shouldn’t. More patience would help me learn more easily about what God’s plan is and what is the next stage , it would help me discern. But, God has been very patient with me fortunately, and still is!
So armed with the the 3 Ps of Prayer, Plan and Patience, I hope I can discern more clearly as I move forward into the next stage of God’s plans. I’m sure I’m not alone in that.
The following verse says it all really…
Jeremiah 29:11 – “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.“
John H