Like any self-respecting Calvinist, I am prone to preface any conversation about future plans with a sincere "God willing" or perhaps throw in a "if the Lord wills" at the end. Really not at all unlike how my Muslim friends end such sentences with "Inshallah".
Sometimes our desires, even biblical ones, turn out not to be God's will. Situations like these can really be the defining moments in one's faith. This is the stage of life that I find myself in and the question I am forced to ask myself is, "Do I really believe that God's plan for my life is better that the one that I desire?"
James speaks to this in his epistle. He writes in 4:13,
"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit'- yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'"
Thankfully Christ gives us an alternative to a life focused on fulfilling our own desires and following our own plans,
"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them." - Matthew 6:25
He continues,
"But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." - Matthew 6:33
When our deep desires are not given to us, we can take comfort that we have been granted something greater: participation in God's kingdom, where what God wants done is done.
I know these things to be true.
"I believe! Help my unbelief." Mark 9:24
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