Does God Really Have a "Plan" for Your Life?

I can think of so many things that I would love to do with my life. Money, education, a good lookin’ husband, beautiful kids, an awesome career, the cutest house on the block, travelling the world… Yes, all of those would be on my list. Yours probably isn’t too far from it. So, If God really does have a plan for my life, is His plan really any better than the plans I can make for myself?

God created everything that you see and don’t see. He created the world. He created everything that we know. He knows what you want; He created you. He knows the desires of your heart; He created your heart. He created technology before we even knew what it was. He has created things that we don’t even know exist yet.

Think about this, let’s pretend that you are sitting down with a ball of fresh clay in front of you. You’re feeling creative. You pick it up and start squishing it around in your hands. You begin to form it into a sculpture.  You are spending a lot of time on this. You have made very intricate details. You’ve formed very complex designs that no one could ever, ever replicate. Let’s imagine, by a stretch of our imagination, that your sculpture has come to life. Bear with me here. Don’t get lost. Really, imagine that you have breathed life into your project, and it has a life of its own now. Except, your sculpture doesn’t understand a lot about itself. It overlooks how intricately designed it is. It doesn’t understand itself like you understand it. You know every single nook and cranny that it has. You formed it. You know how special it is. This, darlin’, is a glimpse into how God looks at you. We think we know ourselves the best. We think we know the best plans for our lives, but let me tell you something shocking: you, my dear, are a masterpiece. You were created in the hands of God. He formed you. He knows things about you that you are completely clueless of, but He wants to reveal these things to you. He wants you to know how insanely elaborate you are.

Unlike a ball of clay that was transformed into a sculpture, you were a thought that was created into a human with an eternal soul. You weren’t created just to sit somewhere. You were created with a very, very, very vital purpose. You’re not an inanimate sculpture; you’re a being that has complex emotions, a complex design, a complex heart, a complex soul. Your life was not an accident. Your creation was not just a bunch of molecules and protons and neutrons and atoms that “accidentally” formed into you.

“O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me.” – Psalm 139:1 (NLT)

You see that it doesn’t say that He knows a lot about you. It doesn’t say that He knows more than most people do about you. It says that He knows everything about you. With that thought, let’s pause here and together, if you can, and read the 139^th chapter of the book of Psalm. David provides us with such an awesome explanation of how well God knows us.

So, why do we think that our plans for our lives are better than the plans that God has created for us? He has things that He is just waiting to show you about yourself. You have talents that you probably don’t even know about yet. Friend, you are intricate. Your creator knows you, knows this world, and knows this life better than you do.

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” – Jeremiah 29:11 (ESV)

The scary part of all of this is: It is absolutely and easily possible to miss out on God’s plan for your life. That, I am sure of. If I had to guess, based only on my own opinions, I would say that 90% of Christians are missing out on God’s desires for their lives. It’s easy to miss out on His plans because most of us are comfortable with where we are right now. We have just as much Jesus as we want at this time. We’re content with our lives. Some of us are just waiting on God to shine a beaming ray of light out of Heaven to show us what He wants us to do with our lives. We assume that God wants us to do exactly what we’re doing right now because, listen: it is extremely easy and extremely common to confuse God’s voice with our own wants for our lives.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” – Romans 12:2 (ESV)

See, that’s how easy it is to miss out on God’s will for our lives. The Devil doesn’t necessarily have to persuade you to do “bad things”. All he has to do is get you not to do what Christ wants you to do. Does that make sense to anybody other than me? The devil isn’t always a big, ugly, scary guy. He can be your best friend if that’s what it takes to get you out of God’s will. He can be fun, pretty, smart, and good looking. The devil isn’t necessarily spending his entire day trying to make you do his will, he’s just spending it making sure that you don’t do God’s will. He just has to get you to do what you want to do. How easy is that for him? If you’re not in God’s will, you’re in Satan’s. Can we wrap our minds around that? That terrifies me.

When I got saved, the first thing that God revealed to me was how spiritually dead I was, and how spiritually dead the world around me was/is. After I found out who Jesus really is, after I witnessed who He is today, I was so confused about a lot of things. I was confused about people, about church-goers, about everyone I saw. Why weren’t people praising Him more? How could you sit back and not sing out in praise to Him? Why weren’t people giving their lives to Him? How could people not be completely passionate about who He is? Why were people not spending every breath talking about Jesus? How can they hold all of this back? I’m about to burst at the seams with being so full of Him! Then, God stopped me in the middle of all of my questions and said one thing: “Hope, my children are going through the motions of things that they think gets them into Heaven. They don’t truly know who I am, today, or they would be radically passionate about Me, My Son, and My Spirit. They wouldn’t dare keep quiet if they knew Us.”

Wake up. Your creator knows you better than you know yourself. His plans for your life are far better than anything that your human mind can come up with. I know this to be so true. God has bigger-than-life plans for you. Plans that will still matter when our flesh has turned back into earth. It is impossible to do anything better than what God has planned for you.

I love George McDonald’s prayer of contentment. It says, “I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking.”

From a girl who was destined to be another face in the “American Dream”, I am now seeking God… desperately. He is showing me that He has plans for my life that my human mind couldn’t begin to comprehend. And, they are already WAY better than where I used to be before I knew Him. I can’t imagine what He has in store for my future. Literally.

“Anyone who isn’t helping me opposes me, and anyone who isn’t working with me is actually working against me.” – Matthew 12:30 (NLT)

I’m not saying that God doesn’t want you to succeed in life. In fact, that’s His desire for you. But, we better be sure that what we’re doing with our lives is worth Christ dying on the cross for. We need to be certain that we are listening to the call of Christ. We should not fear failure; we should fear of succeeding at things in life that won’t matter in the end.

So from this girl to you, I challenge you to pray and study Scripture. Sometimes He’s not just going to slap you in the face with a paper that says “God’s Plan for Your Life: Follow These Instructions” because in a sense, He’s already done that. He’s provided you with an instruction manual. He’s told you about your purpose for being here. He’s given you some insight about what your life should look like. Don’t be the soul who overlooks all of that. Don’t ask God to guide your footsteps if you’re not willing to move your feet.

I, also, want you to know, friend, how much I’ve prayed for you. I love you and your precious life so, so much and send you so many hugs through my computer. I hope that we can all strive to seek out God’s true will for our lives, not our own. Let us focus on the planner, not the plan.