DOES GOD REALLY HAVE A PLAN FOR MY LIFE?

It was HARVEST time in Israel, and a palpable sense of anxiety was in the air. At any moment the wary farmers might lift their eyes to see a tidal wave of Midianite soldiers pouring down from the hills like a flash flood from a broken dam. The Bible describes the Midianites as a nation of "grasshoppers" (Judges 7:12). Whenever the harvest was ripe, they would descend upon Israel's fields and crops in vast numbers like a swarm of locusts, leaving nothing in their wake but destruction and desolation. The Israelites went on the defensive, hunkering down in caves, hiding in the mountains, and building protective strongholds. The nervous harvesters quickly reaped what they could and hid it away in anticipation of an imminent invasion. God had a plan to deliver Israel from the hand of Midian, and He had chosen just the man for the job, but God's choice seemed highly unlikely. Gideon was not a superhero by any stretch of the imagination. He was a victim of his society's ills, a man who had been influenced by the climate of cowardice that had crippled and enslaved the Israelites. He was such a prisoner of fear that he would hide in a winepress to thresh his small harvest of wheat (Judges 6:11). A winepress is no place to thresh wheat; it's like washing your clothes in the dishwasher. But Gideon had chosen this inappro-priate place because he was afraid of the Midianites. He was afraid of losing his harvest and his life, so he hid both under-ground. It was in this dungeon of fear that the Lord found Gideon, frustrated, trembling, and pers-piring. "And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, The Lord is with you, you mighty man of [fearless] courage" (Judges 6:12 AMP). No one would have anticipated the Lord's declaration that day. "Gideon," the Lord says, "you are a mighty man of fearless courage!" Where others saw a coward, God saw a deliverer! I'm so glad God doesn't see us the way we so often see ourselves. When we look in the mirror, we might see someone who is under-educated or inexperienced. We might see someone who belongs to the wrong social class, race, or gender. We might see someone who is too young or too old. And there are always a million excu-ses why God can't use us. But God sees more in us than we see in ourselves, and our obstacles, failures, and shortcomings do not intimidate Him. I am also glad that God doesn't see us the way other people do. Many times when we begin to break out of the old patterns and mindsets that have held us back, rejecting the status quo and looking for higher ground, our greatest opponents are close friends, fellow church members, and even our own relatives. In fact, it's interesting to note that the Midianites, being descen-dants of Abraham, were actually cousins of the Israelites. It was these "family members," if you will, who had so oppressed Israel that they were cowering in fear rather than living victoriously. The enemy knows how to use those closest to us to bring discouragement. They say, "Who do you think you are? Do you think you're better than us? We've known you since you were a child. We've seen all your failures, and we know your faults. You are just one of us. Get back in your place!" Some time ago I became interes-ted in purchasing an aquarium. As I began to research this project, I was amazed to discover all the different types of aquariums that can be bought. There are large ones and small ones, freshwater and saltwater. There are aquariums for fish, aquariums for corals, aquariums for reptiles, and aquariums for invertebrates. What really fascinated me was the aquarium for crabs. I discovered that these particular aquariums had no lids, and I was amused when I learned why. Apparently when you have an aquarium for crabs, you don't need a cover because if one crab tries to climb out, the others will reach up and pull him back down again. I thought to myself, "I know a lot of crabby Christians." We don't like to see someone succeed where we have failed. Envy and jealousy often make God's children competitors and rivals. Often hurtful and judgmental words have wounded brothers and sisters, dragged them down, and kept them from realizing their potential. Sadly this happens all the time in the church world. Just as God is elevating one pastor and blessing his ministry, the other pastors in town oppose him with slander and gossip. They will do every-thing they can to pull him back down into the aquarium of "church as usual". Such a pastor, church, or Christian should take comfort. Someone once told me, "Pity you get for free, but jealousy must be earned." Jesus Himself was delivered by His own people to be crucified - because they envied Him (Matt. 27:18). How often have we been discouraged because of what someone else thought or said about us? Fortunately the wonderful reality is that God doesn't see us the way other people do. In the winepress we find a trembling, perspiring coward hiding for his life when the Angel of the Lord appears to Gideon and calls him a "mighty man of [fearless] courage." At first those words almost sound like cruel sarcasm, but there was no smirk on the Angel's face. God was not mocking Gideon, nor did He have Gideon confused with someone else. God saw something in Gideon that no one else saw, including Gideon himself. How comforting it is to know that God's ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. Oh, my friend, when you understand what God sees when He looks at you, it will change your life! Let me explain it this way. In the early 1500s a twenty-five-year-old artist and sculptor laboured tirelessly with hammer and chisel over a colossal block of cold marble. Other artists had rejected the stone because it had defects, so it sat untouched for several decades before this young sculptor saw something beautiful in it. He worked night and day with obsessive dedi-cation. When someone asked him why he was working so hard on that old stone, he replied, "Because there is an angel in that rock that wants to come out." Nearly three years after starting his work, the young artist, Michel-angelo, unveiled his enduring masterpiece: a seventeen-foot-tall sculpture that today is known the world over as David. Anyone who is an artisan will acknowledge that before a masterpiece is ever crafted, it exists in the mind of its creator. Before a brush touches the canvas, before a chisel touches the stone, before the clay is placed on the potter's wheel, before the artist creates a painting, sculpture, or piece of pottery, before the artist has anything tangible to display, he first and foremost has a dream. In the artist's mind he already sees what he will create before it exists in the physical world. Michelangelo saw something in that block of stone long before anyone else did. Other artists saw impossible defects and imperfections, but Michelangelo saw a masterpiece trapped in that rejected rock, and he worked diligently to set it free. Our God is the Master Artist! Consider the unfathomable wonder of creation, which even in its fallen condition gives us a fleeting glimpse into the genius of its Creator Who, in His eternal mind, saw every detail down to the smallest particle while there was still nothing. Just think about this: the Architect of the universe spoke the worlds into existence, but He crafted Adam with His own hands and breathed into him with His own mouth! God has crowned His creation with a masterpiece, which is distinguished because it is "handmade" by the great Creator! And God continues to fashion mankind with His own hands. Psalm 139:13 says, "For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb" (NAS). Whatever His dream for your life might be, one thing is for sure: His will for your life is beyond what you could ask or think! The Bible tells us that God designed us with a purpose in mind. Psalm 139:14 says we have been "fearfully and wonderfully made." It is only in recent years, with advances in science, that we are beginning to understand just how true those words are. Your body is a mind-blowing feat of engineering an unbelievably complex design. Did you know that your body employs the aid of more than two hundred muscles just to take a single step? Consider the human eye, the design of which is so elegant and complex that scientists still don't fully understand how it works. It moves on average one hundred thousand separate times in a single day; conducts its own maintenance work while we sleep; has automatic aim, focus, and aperture adjustment; pro-vides colour, stereoscopic 3-D images; and can adjust from almost total darkness to bright light automatically. It can discern more than sixteen million colour hues, including seven hundred shades of grey. In fact, Charles Darwin himself said, "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aber-ration, could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." The DNA molecules in your body contain the most densely packed and elaborately detailed assem-bly of information in the known universe. Their code is so unbelievably complex that if you printed out all of your body's DNA chemical "letters" in books, it is estimated that it would create enough books to fill the Grand Canyon fifty times! Of course, I could go on and on citing the wonders of gravity and magne-tism that science still cannot fully explain - the flawless rhythm of the solar system, the perfect balance of nitrogen and oxygen in Earth's atmosphere that makes life possible, the amazing order in nature that forms a self-suppor-ting system of life, reproduction, and waste disposal. But is any of this necessary? What more evidence do we need that our world has been created with intelligence and purpose than the beauty, order, and design we see around us and within us? God told Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:5, NKJV). God both knew and crafted a destiny for Jeremiah the prophet even before his birth. John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit and called to be the forerunner of Jesus even before he was born (Luke 1:15). Samson was called to be a great deliverer before he was conceived in his mother's womb (Judges 13:4-5). This is why, even though God found a trembling, perspiring coward in the winepress, He called Gideon "a mighty man of fearless courage." Someone once told me, "I don't believe in God." I said, "That's unfortunate, because God belie-ves in you." Before you were even born, before God began to fashion and form you, before He began to knit you together in your mother's womb, He had a dream for you and a plan for your life. He had a holy calling for you to fulfil. Paul told Timothy that it was God "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began" (2 Timothy 1:9). Gideon was full of imperfections. He was not esteemed highly in the eyes of other people, and he was a downright loser in his own eyes. But God looked at Gideon just as Michelangelo looked at that rejected piece of marble. In Gideon God could see beauty where everyone else saw only defects. My friend, you might have been written off by every-one else. You might think your life is far too flawed to ever be something beautiful. But our God is the Master Artist! He sees "an angel" in the rock of your life, and He wants to set it free. Through-out your life, no matter where you go or what you do, whenever God looks at you, He sees inside of you the potential He has placed within you, and He is always calling to that potential as He called Lazarus out of the grave, "Come out!" God wants to take your life from the junkyard of the devil and turn it into a masterpiece, a trophy of His amazing grace and mercy! It's amazing to think that even after the Angel of the Lord had appeared to Gideon and told him plainly about God's goodwill toward him, Gideon was slow to believe it. "And Gideon said to him, O sir, if the Lord is with us, why is all this befallen us? And where are all His wondrous works of which our fathers told us, saying, 'Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?' But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian. The Lord turned to him and said, 'Go in this your might, and you shall save Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you?' Gideon said to Him, 'O Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Behold, my clan is the poorest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house.'" (Judges 6:13-15 AMP). Just as Gideon did, many people struggle with feelings of infe-riority. They may have been abused or rejected and as a result have low self-esteem and little self-worth. They may say to themselves, "But I did not come from a wealthy family." "I do not have a good education." "I'm not smart enough." "I was abused." "I do not have any talents or abilities." "I could never succeed." When Gideon looked in the mirror, all he could see were disadvan-tages and shortcomings. He doubted that he was capable of greatness and was not convinced the Lord had picked the right man for the job. But the Lord knew exactly what Gideon needed to hear, and He spoke words that went right to the heart of Gideon's inadequacy: "The Lord said to him, 'Surely I will be with you'" (Judges 6:16, AMP). These must be the most comforting words in the entire world! To know that God is with you and that He is for you - this is the ultimate assurance! These were the words Gideon needed to hear, and these are also the words you need to hear deep within your spirit as you begin the journey of discovering God's will for your life. Jesus knew you would need to hear them, and this is why He said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you" (Heb. 13:5, NKJV) and again in Matthew 28:20, "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (NKJV). Romans 8:31-32 says, "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" (NKJV). God is for you and not against you! Do you need evidence? In this passage of Scripture Paul points to the cross as the ultimate proof of God's goodwill toward us. If God was willing to give His own Son for us, how much more can we trust that He will gladly and generously give us anything and everything we need? Do you feel like a failure? Does the past haunt you and define you? Do you have a difficult time believing God is on your side and has your best interest in mind? It's time for you to get a revelation of the goodness of God. He is not looking for perfect people, and He is not intimidated by your past. He desires "to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified" (Isaiah 61:3, NKJV). Paul wrote about this same truth in Romans 8:28 when he said, "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose" (NKJV). When we understand this reality and it becomes part of the fabric of who we are, then we will begin to view every circumstance, both positive and nega-tive, as a situation God can put to work for our good and the furtherance of His purposes. Salvation, atonement, forgiveness, justification, regeneration, redemption, reconciliation - these are all words used to describe what God desires to do in our lives. Turning ashes into beauty is not an auxiliary benefit of the Christian experience; it is the heart of the Gospel, and it is God's will for you! Jeremiah 29:11 says, "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not evil, to give you a future and a hope" (NKJV). Does God have a plan for your life? The answer is a resounding yes! But it's even better than that. Not only does God have a plan, but He also has a good plan that is "exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think" (Eph. 3:20, NKJV). And with that confidence, we can begin our journey of seeking His will for our lives, "looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith" (Heb. 12:2, NKJV), knowing that "He who has begun a good work in you will complete it" (Phil. 1:6, NKJV). [From: LIVE Before You Die, Daniel Kolenda, Passio, 2013. www.cfan.org].