Jon Bellion said it perfectly in his song when he sang the line, "I guess if I knew His plans, I guess He wouldn't be God."
When I heard it I stopped and thought about what the artist was really saying, "If I knew your plans... you wouldn't be God."
There's so many times I, with my human understanding, think God is supposed to reveal all His plans to me. When I pray I expect results, when I ask Him a question I expect an answer, I get caught up in thinking I'm entitled to know His thoughts. While I'm sure God is eager to share things with us, if He were to reveal His every plan, purpose, and will for our lives we may not always agree - we may try and argue for what we want in that moment.
Because too often we try and play God. We think we know what's best for our lives. We think we can control our circumstances. We forget - we aren't God.
My pastor said a simple phrase one time while preaching that’s always stuck with me on this very issue, he said: "God is God. And I am not."
It’s easy to forget and it’s hard to relinquish the control that we feel we should have over our lives. We have to remember that even in the times we think we know exactly what is best - God is God and we are not.
Natalie Grant wrote a stunning song that hit home for a lot of people across the world, when she sang, “When did I forget that you’ve always been King of the world?”
When did we forget God has always known best? When did we forget His own Word says that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts and His ways are higher than our ways?
When did we think we could be king of our world? We become fixated on shoving God into our box of what we want Him to be. We try to fit Him into OUR will rather than changing ourselves to match His.
We’ve become enamored with the world telling us to, “Follow your heart,” that we forget we should be seeking His.
When did we forget He’s always been King? He’s always been God. We end up stressing, worrying, and crying over our future and all the things we can’t figure out on our own for no reason. God already holds the answers to the questions we are seeking but we are too busy chasing what we want to listen to what He’s saying.
How much heartbreak could we have saved ourselves if we first would’ve prayed for God’s will? We get too caught up praying our own version of Matthew 6:10, we end up saying:”MY kingdom come and YOUR will be done.”
We don’t know God’s will, we may never know His will until He unfolds it in our life – and that’s what scares us the most. The fear of not knowing God’s plans, we must blindly trust Him, and in a world full of trust issues and a “My way or the highway,” mentality that’s often something we don’t want to do.
C.S Lewis once said, “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”
We fear the unknown, it’s only natural, and it’s become imbedded into our human nature to walk around with a guard up. We become so used to it that when God steps in we throw up our guard and back away.
Our pride, selfishness, and selfish nature rises up in us and demands for our way. These are the times when we need to cry out, “Lord, strip it all away...”
“Anything that breaks my heart and anything that breaks Yours’s, strip it all away.” This is the time when Matthew 6:10 needs to flow from out of us, “Thy Kingdome come, they will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”
The hardest part of not knowing God’s plans is not knowing whether or not they line up with ours. But we were never intended to know God’s plans. We were never intended to know His ways or understand His thoughts. We were created to trust Him. To know His ways are higher than ours and whether or not we see it now, His plans will always be for our good.
I’ll leave you with this.
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the thoughts I think towards you sayeth the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an unexpected end.”
God never said YOU know the thoughts I think, He said, “I know.” Don’t miss what this scripture is saying, it’s one of the most beautiful lines God has ever spoke. You see, God said, “I know the thoughts I think towards YOU.”
The creator of the world, the one who hung the stars, painted the sky, filled the oceans, and hushes the storms; HE thinks about you. It doesn’t what our plans are, it doesn’t even matter if WE know what God is thinking, it should be enough to know God is thinking…. of you.
