A Better Plan

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were looking for one thing, and found something else?  Something that was completely different? Something that was better? 

Sometimes in life we will go in a direction, or set off on a mission, and we think we know what we’re looking for, we think we know where we are going, but we come to find out that God has an altogether different plan. A better plan.

Some twenty-five years ago I went looking for something.  In 1985 I had just moved back home, and after I moved in my mom informed me that she thought I needed help!  So she gave me an ultimatum: Get some help for my “alleged” substance abuse problems, and I could live there. Now mind you, I didn’t think I needed any help, but apparently she thought I did, and if I wanted to crash at her house I was going to have to play by her rules. I had a pretty good job at the time, so I called our “Employee Assistance Hotline”, and told them I might, perhaps, drink a little too much, and could they recommend something for that.  They gave me another number to call, and within a few hours I was enrolled in some kind of program meeting ”thing” that I had to be at that next Tuesday night. So that evening I got the address, got in my truck and drove over to an office park, walked into this room full of people I didn’t know, where some guy named Woody was up front talking about getting sober or something, I really wasn’t paying much attention to Woody. My attention was focused on a cute little blond chick up on the front row that I felt like I really needed to introduce myself to.

Now I tell you this because on that day back in November of 1985 I thought I knew what I was looking for, I thought I knew what I was doing, I thought I knew where I was going.  But I came to find out that God had a completely and radically different plan for me, a better plan, and I really didn’t have a clue. It was several years before I was able to put together the pieces and begin to understand what God was doing in my life on that night in 1985.

In 1 Samuel chapter 9, we find a young man named Saul in a very similar situation. Saul is on a mission to find some lost donkeys, but he ends up finding out that God has a completely different plan for his life.  A better plan. Join us Sunday for the rest of the story!

…till the whole world hears,

Pastor Clay