How To Miss Out on God’s Plans

“...I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus”. Phillippians 3:13-14

Ooh boy. There’s a high calling. I guess there’s a low calling, as well, then, by retrospect.

It’s a lot easier to go for the low calling. Minimum effort. We don’t need to leave our ingrained human patterns.

And God allows things. He’ll allow humans to wreck their lives.

This was hitting home in a deep way recently.

A few weeks ago, I made an offer on a house. I was super excited. I’ve been diligently searching for the last couple of years, looking at dozens and dozens of properties. There’s not a lot of available houses in the area that I live, and I might have been getting a little desperate.

Maybe a little.

So I made an offer. And it was crazy less than their asking price. And they accepted it! Score!

At least, they verbally accepted it. The paperwork wasn’t all sorted yet.

In the meantime, someone I respected challenged me. “Are you sure that God’s perfect will for you?”

It really took me back. But I started looking deeper into my own heart. Was I really sure this was God’s will?

I don’t believe seeking God is really that mystical of a thing. Most people, even people who aren’t religious, talk about going from their “gut”. Learning to trust their instinct. That sort of thing.

Well, seeking God is very similar. It’s learning to really tap into what we have a “green light” in. Learning to recognize that still, small Voice in our heart.

Of course, if we have a bias in that, it makes it hard to hear.

As I really got honest with myself, I realized I had a bias. I didn’t have a pure heart in seeking God. I wanted that property. I really, really wanted it.

But my desire to get it didn’t mean God wanted it for me.

As I got more honest with myself, I realized: No. That wasn’t the property.

But it was really difficult! I had a serious case of “Fear Of Missing Out”, or FOMO. Even when I got on the phone to terminate the deal, I was kicking myself.

All I could think was: “but, hey, I finally found a property I could buy! And it’s right there! Why not?”

Well, because of this: God had something better for me.

There’s a difference between God’s “permissive” will and God’s PERFECT will.

Look, I’ll show you.

1 Samuel 8 talks about how the Israelites begged for a king to rule over them. Up until that point, God had appointed judges and prophets to unite the mostly autonomous tribes of Israel. There was a lot more freedom.

But Israel begged for a king.

God warned the Israelites that a king would tax them. He’d enslave their sons and daughters. A king would take the best of their land and use it for his own benefit.

But the Israelites insisted.

See, a king was not God’s perfect will.

But our desires move God.

Our desires can move the Almighty. Really. Crazy, isn’t it?

So, because of the Israelites’ passion for this idea of a king, God relented. He PERMITTED it.

It wasn’t perfect. Oh no. Who knows how God would’ve continued to lead and protect the children of Israel if they would have decided to go with God’s perfect will. 

We can’t know that. Because God PERMITTED Israel to leave His perfect plans.

Because they insisted. Because Israel had plans of their own.

And that was like me. If I was left to my own devices, without help. I would’ve gone through and bought the house.

And who cares? It probably would’ve worked out, right?

No. Wrong. I wouldn’t have gotten to see what God wanted to do.

You know how I know I wouldn’t have gotten to see what God would do if I would’ve gone that way?

Because yesterday, I got to see what God wanted to do.

I worked for years helping to build a fancy house. Not just any house. A gorgeous place. Practically a mansion. 

I joked to someone that that house built me. That’s because God was working in my heart so much while I was building it. So many parts of it God used to work a brand new creation in me.

I was just helping build it, but while I was working on it, God spoke to me that that house was going to be mine.

Bonkers thing to hear deep on the inside of your heart. I almost spoke it out loud, but I squelched it. No way I could afford something like this. God must be crazy.

So, I heard that ten years ago. And I filed that away in the box titled “crazy things God says about my life”.

Yesterday, God brought that house back into my life. 

I’m a pretty private person, so I’m not going to give away all the details. But, long story short, apparently God knows a thing or two.

I’m buying that place.

It’s exponentially better than the place that I said good-bye to. My “fear of missing out” was just that. Fear.

In reality, if I didn’t let go of that ramshackle property I was so excited to find a few weeks ago, I would’ve missed out on what God wanted to do.

I’d been waiting all that time.

But in the eleventh hour, at the last minute, I would’ve settled for something much less.

Right before I got to the answer finally. I would’ve settled.

I told God when I was a boy that I wanted to live an “extraordinary life”. And I’m convinced this is why we don’t get to have an extraordinary life: because we settle.

Over and over again. In many big and little decisions.

When God was forcing me to get honest about my motivations, I realized something. 

I had something in God’s way. I was willing to settle.

Partially, I think part of it was I didn’t REALLY believe God has something perfect for me. I didn’t really believe. Not believing is a real “no-go” when walking with the Almighty God.

Believing is the only way TO walk with God.

“For without faith, it is impossible to please God”. Hebrew 11:6.

Dare to believe impossible things. The White Queen tells Alice in Alice in Wonderland: “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Reader, I challenge you to believe at least six impossible things. Believe God can provide for you exceedingly and abundantly more than you can ask or think, to paraphrase Ephesians 3:20.

Believe that He has answers for you in many aspects of your life.

And then wait on Him to show up. 

Don’t settle. Don’t be like me, ready to settle at the last minute, right before God is willing to show up.

Don’t let your desires move you out of that place of waiting, like the Israelites did. Wait for the glory. Wait for the testimony.

Wait for the perfect will of God.

Lessons in Trust by Amber

Last summer I went through a test of trust, in a situation that didn’t make sense.

I had found a good spot to sell my wares. But I felt God wanted me to leave my “hot” selling spot. I felt God wanted me to go somewhere else. 

I struggled with understanding why, however. I mean, I was excited for the adventure of going someplace new. But the more I thought about it, the more it bugged me.

Why was I leaving the hot selling spot, again?

As I kept asking the Lord why, I felt Him speaking to my heart.

“I have to take you through this,” I felt God speak to me. “I have to put you in a position where you’ll need Me. The last location would have been comfortable for you, sure. It’s true you could have sold quicker, without even really seeking Me or pressing in to truly connect to me.”

Those words comforted me and gave me the expectation that God would meet me here, too.

Then, while I was there, a man came and handed me a card. The front read: “The will of God will never lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you.”

And on the other side was Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not harm you; plans to give you a hope and a future.”

It struck me how fitting it was, and it gave me peace. God knew where we were, what we needed.

It was like God was saying, “It’s okay, I know.”

I kept having to pray for customers, asking God to send people to us. I sold out just as light began to shift into dusk.

Victory! We rejoiced! We thanked God!

As we drove away, I pondered the day. It had stretched me, but now I could see the value of it. God had led us to a new place, but we still had to choose to yield to it, to follow Him and trust Him. I could have said no and not left the previous hot-selling spot. But then we wouldn’t have found the victory we had, either.

I can see the importance of responding when God has something for you. God never wants you to become presumptuous and sedentary. For that reason, He’s always offering new opportunities to exercise the practice of seeking Him, trusting Him. These plans are always to prosper us, to enrich us in learning more of Him.

And I got another chance to exercise seeking God. It was a few weeks ago.

I felt moved in my heart to help finish a log home. Initially, I wasn’t going to go. Things came up. But I still felt a strong urge to go help.

I watched God move the situations around. He said He would make a way in the desert, and He did. Before long, I was heading out. I couldn’t explain why. I just knew God had something for me in it—an ingredient He wanted to put into my life. I carried a real sense of expectation.

Once, the plan changed.

Part of the job was chinking the log home. However, with warm days waning, we decided to move that chinking job into the last stretch of warmer days before the cold weather hit. Other work kept us busy longer than expected. The warm days were running out, and I started to feel the pressure of the narrowing window.

I wondered if we would even get to the chinking in time.

Finally we were ready—with only one warm day left.

Then the weather shifted again. A week later the days warmed back up. .

So I found myself questioning the urgency. Why push through on that single day when more good weather was coming?

I still didn’t understand it all, but I had to trust God. If now was the time, then now was the time. 

I kept remembering that He had put the desire in me to come before I knew any of the details. There was something He was doing, even if I couldn’t see it yet.

So we started. 

We only had one day to finish the entire project, and it didn’t look like enough time.

Thirteen hours later, we were done. It felt like a miracle! I felt so much joy in the middle of the work, and finishing that quickly was glorious.

I knew this was part of what I had come for. But I also sensed it wasn’t everything God wanted to do in me through this job.

As the days went on, more layers of “trust” began to surface.

God began peeling back the layers to show me more and more what “trust” truly was, and the need for it in my life.

One morning, I heard someone sharing about trust. 

“True trust is a gift from God,” he explained.

“It’s not something you can come up with or dole out. You can’t base trust off of how YOU find ‘trustworthy.’ That kind of trust, based on human conditions, isn’t real.

“Yet blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose hope IS the Lord.” Jeremiah 17:7.

As I listened, he described what that meant. The many times in his life that the Lord had spoken to trust Him. 

Not the situations. Not the people in the situations. But to trust God despite it all.

He shared about how he’d have to practice that trust in the Lord in situations that looked irredeemably lost. Through it all, he became more blessed than he ever had been before.

I had heard that verse before, but I heard it differently this time: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord.”

I began to see that’s when your trust is no longer merely trusting man. That’s subject to circumstances and expectations, and given or withheld based upon who is trustworthy or who is not.

Instead, that heavenly gift of true trust is trusting in the Lord. That trust defies situations and even people and whatever they may do.

Having this trust is very blessed. It sows seeds that will produce good fruit in your life, regardless of what a situation may look like according to your interpretation of it.

Another way this trust in the Lord is so powerful is this: that trust doesn’t have fear in it! You can do the things He would have you do without being limited by fear of the outcome.

It was an answer to what I was looking for and needing! I’m very thankful for these parts God is adding to my life!