With God - Part 1

 



My senior year of high school was a pretty dark year for me.  Up to that point, I was a good student; I got mostly A's, joined the basketball team, and did a few extra-curricular activities here and there.  I had this grand picture of what a happy, little Christian life looked like.  During senior year, NOTHING went according to plan, I lost very dear loved ones, and everyone close to me was going through major life changes and challenges.  The messier it got the deeper into a depression I felt myself slipping until eventually I didn't even want to live with the pieces that were left of my picture perfect life.  I have a well of stories from that season in my life, but there is one take-away story I always find myself going back to as the defining milestone of it all.

In the thick of it all, I had to make a decision about what I was going to do next...fight or flight.  Now, if you've been a Christian for any length of time (or you've been around Christians for any length of time), then you're probably familiar with the verse Jeremiah 29:11, "I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. They are plans for peace and not disaster, plans to give you a future filled with hope." So, with this verse in mind, and after quite a bit of whining, I asked God what I should do with my circumstances in hope He would sprinkle His version of pixie dust, the clouds would lift, all would right itself, and I'd be back on track.  Yeah, not so much.  Instead, He sat me down (I was literally on the floor facing the closed door of my bedroom) and we had the following conversation:

"I want you to think about this plan you have for your life.  I want you to visualize each stage from where you are now to what you have next and keep going until your plan comes to an end."

"Ok...graduate with honors, earn college degree, get married, have kids, throw in a few bible studies here and some ministry opportunities there, maybe even a missions trip if it its "Your will" to interrupt my plan, and yeah, I would call it a good life overall."

"Alright.  Understand you can choose your plan, you can rally from where you are now, you will need to work hard to get back on track, and build your life toward your plan.  I will be with you along the way, loving you as I do now, bless and teach you as you live out the plan you have set for yourself.  OR.  You can choose My plan for your life and live out what I have in design for you to live, I will be with you along the way, loving you as I do now, bless and teach you as you build toward the plan I have for you.  However, if you choose My plan, I will not show you my whole plan from beginning to end, just what you need to focus on in each season.  You can choose to go on a big adventure with Me, and I can maximize what I have designed in you to do, and we will do it one season at a time.  The choice is yours."

Now, understand when I was seeing my plan play out in my mind's eye, I had this reel of images playing out as I went through each step of building my happy, little Christian life.  I remember at the end of my reel feeling content, but not satisfied.  I remember considering Jeremiah 29:11 again, "a future filled with hope." I didn't have a lot of hope striving for my plan, just the stress and pressure of trying so hard to get myself to measure up to moving towards...um, what exactly?  And here was God, being ever the gentleman, telling me He had a greater design for my life than I was currently choosing for myself.  The drawbacks?  My plan was predictable and I kind of knew what I was moving toward, and I could claim some tainted sense of control over my future; His plan required complete trust walking into unknown territory not really knowing what exactly He was going to ask me to do. 

In a sense, my plan was safe, comfortable, and had very low risk involved, but in light, it was none of those things.  I was at the very start of my plan and things were already falling apart, and a few weeks prior I didn't even want to live it anymore.  In light, the reel of images playing out in my head was merely a dangling carrot of hope I put in front of myself.  Proverbs 13:12 says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life."  God's promise says His plan is to give us "a future filled with hope," a hope you see through faith in a God you need to choose to trust.  A trust that will battle with your natural sense to want to control things, to understand it on your own terms, and to struggle with fear, doubt, and total disbelief in the One you are trusting.  Yet, those are the terms: dangling carrot, or complete trust.  At seventeen, I don't know how much I understood the significance of it all, but everything in me craved "a future filled with hope."

So, I decided...God, I choose Your plan, and I want all you have for me.  I "felt" God smile (I know that sounds crazy, but think I'm crazy!)  And the picture reel of images from my plan playing in my head the whole time went completely black, and it literally scared the hell of me!  I felt so out of control and uncertain about my life, or even what I was supposed to do next, but I was in hell leading up to this whole conversation; depressed, despairing, and dejected.  Yet, in that blank view of what my future looked like, I finally had a real hope I had not truly experienced up to that day on the floor staring up at the closed door of my bedroom.

Fast forward sixteen years...(am I really that old!?)...my life has been filled with one adventure after another!  I have done things I NEVER would have thought I would do, seen things I didn't know were possible for me, and I have met so many incredible people along the way.  I have learned so much from God, about God, and with God.  I live out one adventure, and still He tells me the BEST is still ahead.  Just when I think I have reached the climax of my little story, He reveals the next part of what we are building toward, and each time I find myself in wonder, each season I find myself looking at "a future filled with hope."  I don't say all this to imply it has been easy, very far from it actually, but each time I submit more of myself to Him in each season, the more I discover both who He is and this woman He created me to become.  In every season, just when I think I will settle in and find my norm, He will tell me, "Don't get comfortable, the BEST is still ahead!"  And you know, I think He will be telling me the same thing when my time is up!  I would use the term "deathbed," but for one, there is no death in Jesus, and for two, I really doubt I'll be idle enough in His plan for me to be lying down waiting to "die!"

Throughout our adventures, God has needed to remind me of the day on the floor when I'm tempted to take control, disobey, or figure it out on my own.  The choice is always mine; I'm not contracted into an agreement from sixteen years ago that is binding and unbreakable.  He will never force it, but it doesn't really work to be in the middle of His plan and try to leave Him out of it either!  So again, He asks me, "Are you with Me?"  

Yes, God. I'm with You.