Or Maybe It's a Planned Crapshoot?

"Do you ever feel like life is a crap shoot? A roll of the dice? That no matter what, sometimes you are just going to roll snake eyes? Or are you confident that God - or some higher power- has a plan for you, that things will work out?" An old friend of mine asked those questions on Facebook the other day as she was preparing a sermon and it got me to thinking. Is the #NarrowRoad a preordained path, laid out by God for us to discover, or is it all random and fluid? Which do I believe? Or perhaps...just maybe...life is a planned crapshoot! Let's explore!

When I was younger- and perhaps this is still happening and I just don't see them anymore- it was popular in some circles for church folk to hand out these things called tracts. These were tiny little pamphlets filled with spiritual information given with the purpose of helping to redeem lost souls in the name of Jesus. It seems to me that every time I encountered someone passing out these tracts they would give the same greeting. It was always, "God loves you and has a plan for your life." It seemed straightforward and simple enough until I really began to think about it. So much depends on what you mean by PLAN. Reading those little nuggets of spiritual wisdom often led one to believe that PLAN meant that if you surrendered to Jesus then God would take over from there. You'd be on easy street. The #NarrowRoad would be all yours to travel with no bumps, no detours and no wrecks. God's plan would always prevail if you only had enough faith. Pray about every decision and God would give you answer- and a can't miss answer at that. It all sounds so perfect.

But then I take a look a the scriptures and remember that the PLAN of God never works that way for the heroes of the Bible. God had hold of David's heart as a boy and was with him as he killed Goliath, but was it really God's plan for David to commit adultery and send Uriah to his death even while being "a man after God's own heart?" Seems unlikely. The disciples walked around with Jesus for 3 years, hearing him teach and watching him heal, and they would eventually be used by the Messiah to start the church and change the world. But most of the time they had no idea what they were doing the next day, much less what God's PLAN was for the rest of their lives! And do we really think that it was God's PLAN for Paul to suffer so much as he shared the good news with the world? Starting with the very first humans we were given free will and have used that free will to make terrible choices and good ones. If by God's Plan someone means that God will prevent us from doing wrong, will stop us from taking detours and will keep us on the #NarrowRoad, then they are reading a very different Bible than I am.

However...having said all of that, I do believe that God is in control. He will never leave nor forsake us. There are things God wants us to accomplish, directions we are pushed in if we place our faith, hope and trust in Jesus. There was a plan for saving the world, and the plan was sending Jesus. There is a plan for loving the world, and that plan is us. So God has a plan for us. But for too many people the word PLAN implies something organized and orderly. Life is chaotic. Life lived with Jesus might be even more chaotic! We are called to step outside our comfort zones, take risks and be bold. We are not called to an easier life; we are called to an ABUNDANT life (John 10:10)! Our God is a God of love and mercy. The gift of grace, at its very core, means not getting what we deserve. But the flip side is also true. Sometimes we get what we don't deserve. It seems far outside the nature of our God that He would choose who gets cancer; that God would choose who dies in car wrecks; that God would choose whose babies will die at birth or which countries would suffer epidemics. There is a randomness to life, even with God in control, because we very fallible and fragile humans have been given free will. I believe in the power of prayer and that God can and does alter our lives and the lives of others through divine intervention. But not always. Sometimes the answer to our prayers is "no." So bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, and life on the #NarrowRoad continues to be unpredictable- no matter how much faith we have.

So my final thoughts on the original questions? God is in control, but God is not a puppet master pulling all the strings. We choose our paths, and those paths may be the #NarrowRoad- or they may not be. So I'm sticking with my answer. God has a plan for our lives. And that plan is often a crapshoot. 

Because of Jesus,

What Does the LORD Require of Us?

Most of you know that I am very much into Twitter. It is my social media of choice, the only one I participate in. You may also know that I am currently followed by 2, 474 people, 1, 986 of whom I follow back. I follow everyone who follows me and do not unfollow unless they are too crude, too obnoxious, spew hatred, only tweet about politics or show no signs of a sense of humor. This means that there are many in my Twitter feed with whom I often disagree. It keeps in touch with a very diverse cross-section of the population, and that is important to me. Every issue has at least two sides, and I believe one of the problems in our nation today is that people only listen to the people with whom they already agree. I am a fan of diversity. 

One of the gentlemen who followed me a couple of years ago is a well-known conservative blogger and author. While our views on political and social issues are often at odds, I have great respect for him as a family man and a human being. He listens. We have sparred a few times, and it is safe to say he considers me a true left-wing liberal both politically and theologically. While his views are often very comparable to those of Fox News and their ilk, he actually IS fair and balanced in his writing. His tweets often give me pause and stir my mind. A few nights ago he asked a great question on Twitter- "What does God want from our lives?" Unfortunately, many of the immediate responses came from his very political fan base. Apparently what God requires of us is to impeach President Obama, close our borders, kill all Muslims and stop gay people from taking over the world. I was struck with a very different answer, and I tweeted my response: The LORD requires us to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with Him. I read that somewhere...

I am sure it made him smile that the first scriptural answer came not from his conservative followers but from a "liberal" like me. Had space permitted, there was more to say about how God wishes we would behave in His name. Jesus reminds us that the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:36-40) is to love God and love our neighbors- and that everyone is our neighbor! He told Peter (John 21:15-17) that if we loved him we should feed his sheep- take care of people, nurture them and love them. And in Matthew 25 Jesus gave us the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven- treat the least important people you meet each day as if they were him, showing them love and giving them hope. The answer to my friend's question has already been written. God does have expectations of us. They just aren't the ones we often expect them to be.

So for at least this one night, in the midst of a lot of conservative uproar, I was the Bible thumping fundamentalist quoting scripture and praying that we might all better understand what it truly means to turn our lives over to Christ. You gotta' love Twitter. You just never know what will happen next...

Because of Jesus,

Smell the Color 9

Listen...do you smell something?

"I would take no for an answer, just to know I heard You speak..."

Lately I've been praying some pretty specific prayers about what God wants me doing with my life and how He wants me to go about it. As I wrote last week, I am ready to take some steps I can't take back. I'm praying to feel the leading of the Holy Spirit. And to be completely honest, I'm just not getting any answers- that I'm aware of. Now I spent enough years teaching and preaching about prayer to know that God answers all prayers. I am fully aware of the sermons that teach us that there are 4 answers we may get. I believe they all follow this basic format:
1) NO- Sometimes God just says no, and we have to get over it and trust that God knows best.
2) SLOW- Sometimes God wants us to be patient and to wait on whatever it is we are asking for.
3) GROW- Sometimes God has areas of of our spiritual life that He wants to see mature before giving us what we ask for.
4) GO-  Sometimes God simply says YES!
It is entirely possible that I am getting the SLOW or GROW answer from God and that I just don't want to hear it. But what it feels like to me is that God is backed up with prayer requests and that mine is not getting past the secretary. Anyone else ever feel that way?  

"Now I'm not looking for burning bushes or some divine graffiti to appear..."

I know better than to expect God to spell it all out for me. Jesus' disciples never had a clue what the plan was for them- why should I be any different? God likes to make us search, because there is much to be learned in the process. It's  just that sometimes in my life- like right now- I want answers. More specifically, I want God's answers. Sometimes I wish He was a CEO, so I could file a plan and He could accept it or reject it. Or maybe just send God a text to make sure I'm going the right direction. But that's not how it works. God wants me to discover what He has coming up next in my life, not file my plan with Him. And no matter how hard I search, I cannot find the home office. I know that Jesus is all the proof I should need that God loves me and will take care of me, but I struggle with wanting more. It's like Chris Rice wrote in his amazing song (all the quotes in this post are from it) Smell the Color 9:

"Cause I can sniff, I can see, and I can
count up pretty high; but these faculties
aren't getting me any closer to the sky,
but my heart of faith keeps poundin' so
I know I'm doin' fine but sometimes findin'
You is just like tryin to smell the color nine."

You know what? I lied. I do want a burning bush. I want to know God's will in my life, and I want to know it now. I want a return text message from God giving my life direction. But I'm not going to get it. There is a great mystery to following God and putting our lives in Jesus' hands. It is in many ways a trip into the unknown, one of the scariest places there is for human beings. That's why we call it faith- the evidence of things unseen. We want control and we try desperately to hang on to it. But in fact, real prayer is about letting go of control and trusting God totally. So I'll keep praying, and trust that the answers will come. Until then, I'll just keep trying to smell the color 9...

"Nine's not a color, and even if it were you can't smell a color.

No, and that's my point exactly..."

Because of Jesus,