“The biggest hindrance to the plan of God in your life, is your plan for your life.”

We all seem to have a pretty good idea of what our lives are supposed to look like. We always think we know how things are going to work out. We always think we know the right path to take.

However, I’ve found that often in my walk with God, that what I think God is going to do, is not what ends up happening. Where God takes me and what God does in my life is often not what I thought He would do.

I often find myself saying, “This is not what I thought my life would look like right now. This is not where I thought I’d be. This is not what I thought I’d be doing.” Have you been there?

At first it can be a bit disappointing. My plans didn’t work out. What I wanted to be doing, I’m not doing. Where I thought I was going to be, I’m not there. Bitterness can sink in. I start questioning God.

So often in life, God wants to move us from one place to another, but we fight with everything in us to stay on the path we have drawn out for our lives.

However, if we’re ever going to live the lives God intended us to live, we need to surrender our plans to Him and latch onto His plans with everything in us. That will often entail us saying, “This is not what I thought my life would be…”

To do that we will need to realize that God’s plan may not always be what we think it is going to be, but it always ends up better than what we thought it was going to be and better than anything we could have thought up on our own.

Surrender what you think for what God knows today. Be open. Trust Him.

¹⁰ Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.                                                                                                       Galatians 1:10

It’s hard to go through life not wanting people to like you, to be impressed by you, or even wanting others to envy you. But in reality, not that many people are thinking about you as much as you think they are anyway. My friend Zack Blair taught me this truth when I was asking him his opinion about what I thought others thought about a decision I was making and he said, “Bubba, people don’t wake up every morning thinking about you.” Ouch! Haha! But it’s true!

I’ve heard it said that we spend the majority of our lives trying to impress people we don’t even like and in this case, that don’t even really think about us as much as we think they do.

I was thinking along these lines and the question came up, “What if I lived and died, and nobody remembered me?” Because in reality – regardless of what I do in life, 50 years after I die, nobody is going to remember me.

My conclusion: What I do in life will matter in eternity. Jesus said to Peter that he should have one focus in life if he loved Him: “Feed His Sheep.“  I believe that is God’s call on all of our lives – to point people to Him. That’s it. If that becomes our focus in life – lifting people and pointing them to God -> we’ll be free from wanting to please and impress people and our focus will turn to pleasing God.

“What we do in life, echoes in eternity”

And while people here won’t remember me, there will be people in Heaven as a result of what I did while I was here. They will come up to me and you in Heaven and say, “Thank you for pointing me to Jesus, I’m here because of you.” I’d rather have 1 person tell me that I made a difference in their lives for eternity than 10,000 remember my name in 5 years.

Application? Lift people and point them to Him. Stop caring what people think of you. God will remember what you did for His Kingdom, and so will the people that are in Heaven because of your life – that is all that matters so do what God has called you to do and at the end of your life you’ll be able to say along with the apostle Paul - I’ve fought the good fight and finished my race and to the people I’ve touched, it’ll have made all the difference.

I’ve heard about this books hundreds of times from people, and finally got the chance to read it because of Bible School. The book is a quick and easy read, and it is excellent. It takes the stories of King Saul, David, and Absalom and compares how they led people and treated each other.

The tag-line of this book reads: “A study in brokenness” – which is very fitting. This book really taught me that God longs to have broken vessels who want His will above their own. Our ministries are not our own, they are God’s, and can be taken from us at any moment. The best any of us can do is just live our lives fully-devoted to God and trust Him that if we live lives of integrity and live for doing His will, that one day we really will hear, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

Final Grade: 8.5/10    Buy it here

Here are some highlights:

“In David’s darkest hours, we knew them as his pre-king days, but he didn’t. He may have assumed that was his lot forever.”

“David never spoke to people about authority. He never spoke of submission, but everyone submitted to him.”

“Many pray for the power of God. More every year. Those prayers sound powerful, sincere, godly, and without ulterior motive. Hidden under such prayer and fervor, however, are ambition, a craving for fame, the desire to be considered a spiritual giant.”

“After the passinf of time, and the way you react to that leader, be he David or Saul, reveals a great deal about you.”

“Men who speak endlessly on authority only prove that they have none.”

“Beginning empty-handed and alone frightens the best of men. It also speaks volumes of just how sure they are that God is with them.”

“I desires His will more than I desire a position of Leadership.” – David