My Way or God's Way?

Still reading in Genesis.  And I got to thinking about Isaac and Ishamel.  Both sons of Abraham.  Both with descendants that number like the stars.  From Isaac we have Israel and the chosen people of God.  From Ishmael we have Islam, a religion devoted to destroying the chosen people of God.

It's easy to see the root of the division between the two groups of people.  Ishamel was bitter at having been sent away.  And it's easy to see how that bitterness turned him against Isaac and his descendants.  But I don't think that his bitterness is where it all started.

God had laid out his plan to Abraham and Sarah.  They would have a son.  In God's time, despite their age, despite all the appearances of Sarah being barren, they would have a son.  But Sarah decided that she couldn't wait.  Abraham needed a son.  She decided that she would come up with her own plan.  Abraham would marry her maid, Hagar, and Abraham's son would come from that marriage.  Abraham married Hagar.  Hagar got pregnant.  Hagar had a son.  And Sarah had a problem.

When God tells us part of the plan that he has for our life, why do we try to make it come to pass on our own?  Do we honestly think that we know better than God?  Can we not trust God enough to let him bring that plan along in the timing that he sees as best.  In short... No.  We get impatient.  We want God's plan now.  And when we don't see that plan moving quickly enough we decide to move it along ourselves.  And we have a problem.

When I graduated from Rhema Bible Training Center in '98 I decided to move back to Indianapolis.  I moved back in with my parents and volunteered as the Youth Pastor at a brand new church.  But for three years I felt like I was supposed to move to St Louis.  I had a good job, a good group of friends, and was attending a good church.  But something didn't feel right.  So I moved.

In St Louis I was rehired at my same job.  I started attending a great church.  I made new friends.  Life went on.  It didn't seem much different than what I had in Indianapolis.  But did you notice I said great church and not good church?  I'm not trying to knock the church I attended in Indy.  It was a good church.  But the teaching at my church in St Louis was worth the move.  And my life continued to grow in ways I cannot see happening if I had stayed in Indy.  I've gone on mission trips that changed my life.  I've advanced in work.  I met the woman God planned for me for all my life.  None of these things could have happened in Indy.

It was a big decision.  I packed up and moved to a different city because God wanted me in St Louis.  I didn't have a ministry or a new job waiting for me.  I was moving because God wanted me to.  But the timing was everything.  I stayed in Indy for three years.  And I had thought about moving to St Louis after Rhema.  But God's plan didn't have me moving until 2001.  And the timing made all the difference.  Had I moved to St Louis in 1998, I would have had to crash at my brother's house, and would have felt obligated to move out as quickly as I could.  I didn't have a job line up so I would have had to find something quickly in order to find a place to live.  It would have been a struggle that I didn't need.  But taking the time in Indy for my life to get prepared my transition to St Louis was smooth and easy.  Exactly how God wanted it to be.

We can never know how things "would have been."  Every choice that we make has an impact on our future.  Each decision you make, however small can profoundly impact the plan that God has for your life.  But trusting God's plan makes the "would have been" seem much less like the greener side of the fence.