I read Psalm 139 last month and had a thought.
v16: “In Your book were written all the days appointed for me when as yet there was not one of them.”
Don’t you just think that God, in the moment that He finished creating you, with dirty hands, opened that book, took out a pen and wrote all of your days, then and there? Knees folded beneath His bum, nose inches away from His paper, with widened eyes, grass-stained elbows and teeth dug into His bottom lip. His pen couldn’t seem to move fast enough, for your life epoch was coming together far too well.
This message is so relevant and I’ve got to tell you why. Because every last person reading these words — every person sitting to your left or right and every person you drove next to today and all the people you’ll walk past tomorrow, no matter the things they think about God, or how little they think about God, or how much they hate Christians — every last one of them has a purpose ordained by God established before the foundations of the world.
I could have a decently educated chat with you about predestination. I think about it a lot. I’ve admittedly found dozens of things all written in the same Book that make me shoot my eyes up and furrow my brow and wonder what’s actually true. But that’s not what I was hoping to talk about.
I just wanted to mention that the pressure is off. I think that all the things that you decide to do are God’s plan A. The same plan A that He blueprinted that one day, millions of years ago in the Garden when He dreamt your whole life into existence. And don’t you think that He paused occasionally to look into the sky for inspiration? Maybe that’s when He realized the birds could teach us about going places and worrying less.
Sometimes I feel like a broken record always mentioning the freedom that we have, but it still feels relevant to me that Holy Spirit promised us that our Heavenly Dad would work all things in accordance with His will (Ephesians 1: 11). And equally as relevant is that when we volunteer our minds to Holy Spirit for Him to transform, we begin to dream the same type of thing that God desires for our lives (Romans 12: 2). And with these promises alone, we’re granted a breed of freedom that actually invites us into all the risks that we tend to shrink back from for fear that we’ll forfeit God’s plan A.
But what if everything you’ve ever done and all the things that you’ll ever do — all the risks you’ll take and all the “mistakes” you’ll inevitably make and all the “failures” that will be disguised as setback were God’s only plan A? What if there was no plan B-Z?
Would we take different jobs and buy more plane tickets? Breakup with more boyfriends? Sell more possessions? Go to different universities? Move to scary cities? Maybe even stay put and invest in God’s faithfulness? Would we do the thing that’d “mess up” God’s will?
…
I have a wildly creative friend that wrote a voiceover that feels pertinent. Her name is Katelyn Nix (@katey_v) and here’s what she said…
“I think the beautiful thing about realizing how fragile life is, is that it brings movement. It makes you do all the things that you were maybe too afraid to risk, and all of the doubtful ideas and grand dreams that seem incapable. And it’s when you do those things you realize that the unknown is actually a place of adventure, free of fear, and it’s then you start to really live. I just wonder what if we just went for it, and God just showed us His faithfulness through all the ways that we fail? Maybe your story is what another person needs to know that it’s worth it — it’s worth taking the risk and going into the unknown. Because it’s there that we’re free of fear and we start to really live.”
I’ve grown into conviction that Holy Spirit is so dearly acquainted with the gal that God designed me to mature into that every time He nudges me, He’s simply calling me into a greater measure of my potential. It’s when we start saying yes to every whisper that we find ourselves doing the thing that God purposed for us.
In other words,
the pressure is off.
…
Linked here are more thoughts on God’s will for your life 🙂
