You make too many plans

You make too many plans

Her words reverberated through my ears, and I stood still, shocked and amazed that I just got rebuked by a 7 year old girl. No, this was not a dramatic episode from a prepubescent dating relationship. This was about 5 months ago. I had become friends with the two neighborhood girls near my house. I had tried to sing Hannah Montana with them for fun and we played in the park and I threw them around and played tag with them. One time she wanted to have fun again one night but I said I had to go to a prayer meeting, she asked about the next night and I was going to a house for a worship gathering. The next night I was going to a saturday night young adult service at the regina ap. That was when she uttered her disappointed rebuke.

I had filled up my life with good things, good plans. I had a planned worship/prayer/bible study/church event 6 out of the 7 nights of every week. I felt like this must be what God wanted, but I also felt the sting of truth in her words. Perhaps I do make too many plans, perhaps I have filled my life with so many things that there is no more room for God to jump in and do something amazing. These were my thoughts this morning as I thought about my life.

This ATL month has changed my life. The schedule is so loose and we just need to listen to God for what we will do each day. We have had some incredible times of just hanging out and growing so much closer together. I found that friendship grows the most when time doesn’t need to be productive. When spending time with that person is more important than getting something done during that time. We also have had God supply so many great ministry contacts and great lodging arrangements. There is so much more room for God to move when we don’t have any prearranged commitments.

In planning this next year I don’t want to make any commitments. Not even a job or teaching sunday school. I want to be consistently unpredictable, just like God. People can always know what I’ll be like but never what I’ll do next. God has called us to see the invisible and do the impossible. God has not called us to do things that we can do. He’s called us to do things that we’ll never be able to do in a million years.

Last year there were so many good things that I wanted to do, but I never had the time. I was constantly thinking of good ideas and beautiful things I could do to help people but I just never had time for most of them. I want to write thoughtful and caring letters and encouragement notes, I want to shovel snow for invalids. Be overly generous and kind to the people who don’t like me or treat me poorly. I want to be able to take adventurous road trips with friends to places where we have no plans but to obey God and trust Him to touch people’s lives. I want to take the guard rails off my life and trust Him like I’ve never trusted Him before.