"'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,' says the Lord. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.'" - Isaiah 55:8-9
"And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose." - Romans 8:28
Have you ever been young, naïve and totally convinced that you knew what was best? No, my goal with that question is not to get you pointing the finger at your teenage child. In some way or another, we have all been in that place. Who are we kidding? We all still find ourselves in that place more often than we’d like to admit. It’s that state of mind where everything makes so much sense to us. We have come up with the best plans and methods—and we’re sure they are going to work out great. However, there are a couple of major problems with this thought process. First of all, we don’t know the future. We think we have an idea of how things will be a few years down the road. The truth is that we don’t even know what life will look like five minutes from now—let alone five years from now. Only God can see the beginning from the end. The second problem with that thinking is that we really don’t even know what is best for us. Oh, we think we have a pretty good idea of what is best. We are pretty sure the best life for us is one of ease, comfort, unceasing happiness and the ability to do what we want when we want. So, we receive quite the awakening when we realize that God doesn’t give us the kind of life that we thought was best. Rather than working all things together for our preference, He chooses to work all things together for our good. His plan for us involves difficulty. It involves discomfort. It involves times of heartbreak. It involves a breaking of our will so that we may learn to humble ourselves before Him.
I thought I had all of the plans for missions and Mexico figured out. It was about seven years ago. I had just graduated from Bible college and was about to get married to a beautiful girl that I met while there. She too had a heart to serve Jesus in Mexico. We were ready to go and there was nothing that would hold us back from jumping into the calling that God had upon our lives. When we wrote up the invitations for our wedding, we asked that our friends and family refrain from buying us wedding gifts. After all, we would soon be heading to Mexico and didn’t want to bring a lot of things with us. It was a great plan—until our sovereign, omniscient, infinitely wise God stepped in and changed everything. I had been offered a full-time pastoral position at my church to lead the student ministry. My answer? “Wow, I am so honored that you would consider me for this position. But no. Priscilla and I are headed to Mexico.” My pastor convinced me to pray about the opportunity before making a final decision. In truth, the concession to “pray about it” was half-hearted with no expectancy that God would actually alter our dash for Mexico. After all, I was called to be a missionary in Mexico, not a youth pastor! And yet, as the verse says, God’s ways are so much higher than our ways. It took some convincing during my quiet times with the Lord (actually more like the Lord beating me upside the head with a two-by-four for days on end), but I realized that the Lord was indeed calling me to take the student pastor position at our church. “Ok, it will only be a short detour on our way to Mexico,” I thought. “We’ll just spend two years here getting our feet wet in the ministry, learning valuable lessons that a young couple fresh in the ministry need to learn. It will be fun and such a blessing. Then we’ll make our way to Mexico.”
What followed was four years of serving Jesus in student ministry at Family Worship Center in Pueblo, Colorado. They were four years of excitement, satisfaction, growth, fruit and blessing. They were also four years of pain, struggle, discouragement and refinement. When the season reached its end, we were not marching off triumphantly to Mexico as I dreamed we would. Instead, we walked away licking our wounds, desperately needing to be refreshed by Jesus as a family. We moved to California to take a break from the fish-bowl life that is the ministry. We wanted to spend lots of time individually at Jesus’ feet and together as a family enjoying each other. We knew we were still called to Mexico but we desperately needed the Lord to refresh our hearts, our marriage and our vision. I took solace in the thought that it would hopefully only be a short transition season before we could finally head down to Mexico.
Now here we are, after two and a half years in California—finally with the peace that now is the time to move to Mexico. God has done an amazing work. He has renewed, redeemed and unified our hearts and our passion for Mexico. God has worked out a plan in our lives that has been much different than the one we thought would play out. It has taken much longer and been much more painful than we thought it would be. Yet, there is no disputing that it has led to better preparation and more depth of maturity than we would have had otherwise. In fact, we sit today so thankful and in awe of the wonderful wisdom and grace of God’s plan. His thoughts and ways are indeed so much higher than ours. They are higher not only in their incomprehensibility but also in their quality. Our God not only knows the future, He also has unfathomable wisdom when it comes to knowing how to make “all things work together for good” in our lives. We can trust Him. We can trust His plan. Will it be easy? No. Will we avoid pain and discomfort? No. Will we always understand what is going on in the midst of it? No. Will He formulate an incredible plan for our lives that draws us closer to Him, makes us more like Jesus, provides abundant peace and joy and is the very best for us? Most definitely. The most perfect plan ever was not the one we came up with all those years ago. It was the plan that messed up ours and brought us to where we are today.