Our PLAN B Can Be God’s PLAN A

A couple of days ago when I was preparing to evacuate as fires burned toward our Southern California home, I tossed my first Bible–tattered but cherished by me—and my five-foot high stack of hand-written journals into my car’s boot. When the threat passed 24 hours later, I grabbed one of those journals and leafed through its coffee-stained pages from a time early in my faith walk. One of the entries stopped me in my tracks–Plan A versus Plan B. Here is what I wrote to myself back then:
  
“Enough with your expectations, Mark. When are you going to pay at least a little attention to God? When are you going to listen to God so you can hear what he is saying to you through your disappointment that your plan isn’t materializing? When are you going to ask God what he might be saying about your plan and consider that he may have a better plan?”
  
While I never used the terms PLAN A and PLAN B in my journal, that is EXACTLY what was happening back then. When things did not go according to my PLAN A, I did NOT turn up the volume of his voice to hear what he wanted me to hear. You know, PLAN B in my eyes, but God’s PLAN A.
  
Fast-forward many years to the present and I am a FaithWalker much less focused on finding the door to my PLAN A with its perfect four corners. I am much more intent on spotting God’s door.  
  
I finally realized that being a light for Christ in a dark and dying world will never happen if I waltz past doors he opens and insist on finding the door to my PLAN A.
  
Burning with grief over our unfulfilled Plan A’s puts us face-to-face with reality and opens us up to hear Satan’s lie that our future has been smothered. But unfulfilled Plan A’s–and the crushing disappointment they generate–are NOT the story’s end.
  
I thank God for guiding me and ask him to forgive me for stepping out ahead of him and his plans for me. To help me see when to stop and listen for HIS direction because I KNOW his ways are perfect.
  
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
  
Are you actively looking for God’s redirection of your PLAN A to HIS PLAN A? Are you embracing that new direction with the courage required to release the past and move forward with him, especially when the road ahead may be full of uncertainty?
  
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6