Embracing Those Rerouted Plans
As you look back on your life, can you see places in which you were plotting a course, and without your permission, it entirely changed? Looking back now, can you see how that unexpected turn was a gift from God? Do you recognize other moments in which you still can’t understand why it had to happen that way?
It’s one thing to plot your course and an entirely other thing for the Lord to establish your steps. (Proverbs 16:9)
More than two decades ago, while we were busy plotting our course, God was determining our steps—right into an unexpected job interview. Within a week of that divine appointment, my husband was hired, or should I say, we were hired. As is the case with boarding schools, it’s an all-hands-on-deck commitment. We were assigned to live in a boy’s dorm, where my husband would serve as an assistant head, and I took a position working in the Admissions Office. So much for our plans to return to his boarding school a decade later with grad degrees under our belt and our own teens ready to enroll. Instead, we were newlyweds living in a dorm of 40 teenage boys without any children of our own.
Sometimes, things don’t work out as we plan.
I never did get that grad school degree, although Stephen squeezed his in somewhere between juggling dorm duty, teaching Chemistry, and fathering our children. That child we dreamed of seeing enrolled at her daddy’s school came to pass fourteen years later, but alas she never did become an alum, as God rerouted us to a new school her junior year. Yes, things don’t always turn out how you expect. There were twists and turns we never could have planned, and yet I see the hand of God at work in both His provisions and His redemption throughout times in which I felt nothing but confused.
God’s reroutings will take you to places you never imagined.
In the midst of our planning, God is going about His purposes that are always perfect and merciful.
In our chaos, He continues to abounding in love, overflowing in grace, and our steadfast source of never-ending hope.
He continues to be faithful, forgiving, and busy redeeming all the time.
Our plans are not beyond His boundaries of intervention or interruption, because He is above all things and in all things. He is before all things and around all things.
When our life dramatically changes out of no-where, God is always in the middle of our now-here.
Our life circumstances are never a surprise to the Lord.
God is about the business of completing the good work He began in us. He is about transforming us from the inside out, making us more and more like Him. He will use everything to conform us according to His desires for our lives. And so, rerouting of our plans, putting off of our dreams, facing unforeseen failures, and accepting the unexpected, are all a part of this life God has laid before us to live.
Oh yes, we can dream, hope, pursue, and even obtain all sorts of things in our lifetimes. But I do believe, that’s all but by the grace of God. And while dreaming, hoping, pursuing, and planning, we might be called to something all-together different.
There are blessings to be found in both fulfilled dreams and rerouted ones.
That’s because the life we crave isn’t found in the plans — it’s found in the intimacy of walking in fellowship with the One who ordained them.
Has this life taken you by surprise? Why not dig deeper into a relationship with the One who ordained it and see if you can discover His purposes? This tool can help you experience a fresh encounter with God.
Embracing His Plans with You,
Lisa
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