I don’t know about you but often things don’t really go the way I planned for them to go. Sometimes it’s important to fight for things in your life to turn around but sometimes we have to just let things play out. It’s important to be able to determine which is which so we can stay in the middle of God’s plans for our lives.
I want to encourage you that even if things are not going the way you planned, and it’s one of those times you need to just let things play out you’re not alone. One of the devils greatest tricks is to make us feel isolated and alone but that’s never the case. Someone else has always been or is going through something similar to what you are experiencing right now.
Don’t let a change of plans take you off course. Instead use it as an opportunity to evaluate the direction that you really need to be going. I’ve found that when I feel like things are not going at all the way I had planned it’s often because of 1 of 2 things.
(1) It’s just a seed planting season not a growth season. When things aren’t going the way I expected it’s sometimes because the situation isn’t ready for the change I want to see happen. When this is the case instead of allowing a sense of defeat to take over I adjust my perspective to see that the change of growth I so long for will eventually happen but maybe at a different time. For now I have to focus on planting the right seeds in the right places so that things will be able to grow when the time is right.
(2) The short term plans that I had for myself would actually take me off course from my long term goals. It’s not always easy to know exactly how to pave a direct path into the future you want for yourself. We just don’t have the perspective that God has to get us to the right places at the right times. When I realize that my plans might not be the best way into my future it’s a lot easier to just let things play out and focus on figuring the next best step instead of fighting for something that will never get me to where I want to go.
In Jeremiah 29 the prophet Jeremiah sent a letter to the surviving exiles in Babylon. I think it’s safe to say that being and exile was not at all what these people had planned for their lives! The letter was to tell them what God was saying for them. In verse 11 it says “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
That is so encouraging to me and I hope it’s encouraging to you too. No matter what things look like for each of us today, even when things don’t look at all the way we had planned, we can always rest in the assurance that God has good plans for our future and we can trust him to get us to the exact right places at the exact right time.