Anyone reading this article knows in his/her heart-mind-and-gut that the ‘plan’ a person tries to live out proves, over time, to have so many twists-and-turns, surprises and failures, successes and wounds that both the personal journey and the outcome prove very, very different than originally intended.

Take the life of Job, for instance, lived ages ago.  In Job 29 & 30, you hear Job’s words about the life he thought he’d have:  “Oh, how I long for the good old days, when God took such very good care of me.  When the Mighty One was still by my side and my children were all around me.  When everything was going my way, and nothing seemed too difficult.  I thought, I’ll die peacefully in my own bed, grateful for a long and full life, a life deep-rooted and well-watered...  But no longer, now my life drains out, as suffering seizes and grips me hard.  I shout for help, God, and get nothing, no answer!  What did I do to deserve this?  I expected good, but evil showed up; I looked for light, but darkness fell.  Each day confronts me with more suffering.  My fiddle plays nothing but the blues.”

Who can’t identify with Job, when it comes to having a ‘preferred plan’ for your life and finding that things turn out very, very differently?!  But can we “go the distance” with Job as well?  That is, like him, may we:  
(1) keep the dialogue going with God, even when we don’t begin to understand what and why certain things are currently happening to us?!  And (2) ‘keep the faith’ and let the faith keep us?! 

In Job 19, Job, with faith, amidst unparalleled suffering for any human being, says, “still, I know that God lives – the One who gives me back my life.  And I’ll see Him – even though I get skinned alive! – see God myself, with my very own eyes.  Oh, how I long for that day!”  And Job 21:22 & 42:1 says “But who are we to tell God how to run His affairs?  He’s dealing with matters that are way over our heads…I’m convinced:  You (Oh, God) can do anything and everything.  Nothing and no one can upset your plans.  I babbled on about things far beyond me, made small talk about wonders way over my head.”  And get this, at the very end of the book of Job (42:13f), we read, “God blessed Job’s later life even more than his earlier life….Then he died – an old man, a full life.” 

It was part of Job’s particular destiny, to have a major chapter of suffering, as a means of gaining a deeper understanding of life, writ-large-and-small, and as a means of ministry and encouragement, ages later, in our very own generation-and-times, for people like you and me, who read his story.
 

God’s plan, by necessity, carries His purposes, and we are His vessels.  Certainly not all that happens to us is caused, or even intended by God.  But God is both sovereign and foresighted enough to weave His purpose and to provide His presence and counsel to us, if we’ll only welcome, value and heed it.  You and I need to widen the perimeters of our own plans and welcome His counsel, purpose, presence and grace to profoundly replace our limited, unimaginative, fear-based plan for His greatly imaginative, more redemptive and loving one. 

Bottom-line, for each and everyone of us: God’s intention for you and me is truly, truly good, regardless of how we, at times, feel otherwise; we read in Ephesians 1:4-5, “Long ago, even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ.  Long before He laid down earth’s foundations, He had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of His love, to be made whole and holy by His love.  His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own family, by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ.  And this gave Him great pleasure.”

The circumstances of life, which at times vex you, need not loom larger in your life than Christ.  Adverse circumstances are an inevitable part of each and every person’s life journey, whether he/she is a believer-or-not.  But, if Christ is at the core of your being, God’s Master-Plan for your life will, by His grace and in His timing, redefine those very circumstances and paradoxically, by using them, reveal His purpose for-and-through your life, as it did Job’s.