What To Do When Your Plans Collide With God’s

Have your plans for you ever collided with God’s plans for you? Mine sure have. It’s happened several times, mostly career related.

The first collision happened when I was 24 years old. I had spent my first year out of college working for a non-profit correctional services agency, helping men coming out of prison to find employment. It wasn’t my first choice for work. As a recent college graduate with a sociology degree, my sights were set on being a probation officer. I had my career all mapped out. I would go to work for the state then move on to the federal level and eventually retire with a government pension.

I had connections with many of the probation agents and the local director in the county where I lived and worked. A job for an entry-level probation officer came available, and I put in my application. I had the education for it and had spent the last year working with men who were on probation. I was sure that I would get the job – a shoo-in. I interviewed well, but I didn’t get the job. I was devastated. All my plans came to a screeching halt. How could they not select me?

A few weeks after my rejection, I was contacted by a friend who offered me a job to work with him part-time in the financial services industry. Why me? I didn’t know anything about financial services, and the last thing I wanted to be was a salesperson. He explained some simple concepts about how money worked and I was mesmerized.

I hit the books again, did the required coursework, and took the industry-mandated tests in order to be fully licensed as a financial advisor. I went to work part-time with my friend, and within two years I was full-time at it, a position I held for over 20 years until God led me into the management and leadership ranks of the industry.

The Bible tells us that man was put in the garden to work it. Some erroneously believe that work was a result of the fall. It was not. God ordained work before the fall: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it (Gen 2:15).”

We get the word vocation from the Latin “vocare”, which means “to call.” God called man to partner with Him in His creation. God called me away from my plans to His plan for my life. It only took a short while to turn my back completely on my plans and grab hold of the new plow that the Lord gave me. But it wasn’t until many years later that I came to realize that my friend’s interest in me was divinely ordained; that the Lord had worked in my friend’s life to introduce me to my calling. He had circumvented my plans for me for His plans for me.

Our work is holy; our act of worship. Paul put it this way: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving (Col 3:23-24).” This has become one of my “life verses.” I have committed it to memory and to practice and sought to keep it at the center of my life, and tried to teach it and live it to my children as well.

So often we spend much of our working years pursuing the things we want instead of the things we need; more money, more status, more stuff, etc. In his book, “The Man in the Mirror”, Patrick Morley states, “The secret of job contentment is not getting what you want, but redefining what you need.” In the book, Morley discusses his personal story of how God thwarted his plan to replace them with His divine plan. Morley said that before he came to fully understand God’s ways, whenever he was blocked from a goal, it had never occurred to him that God was saying “no”. He came to realize that what he wanted was simply not going to happen. The result, he states, “My ambition collided with God’s plan for my life. What I wanted was an ever-expanding business, but what I needed was to crucify my ambition.”

It’s a great thing when we start with a crucified ambition, but very few of us do. My experience, like that of Patrick Morley’s, is that I often don’t hear God’s voice until I run out of things to say. It’s amazing how clear His voice becomes once I’ve come to the end of myself, that is, I quit talking. It’s hard to listen and talk at the same time.

Oftentimes God has to intervene and crucify our ambition for us because we’re too focused on what we want versus what we need. Initially, the consequences are painful, but the end result is a partnership with our Creator that puts us on the track for fulfilling His purpose for us. When we are in God’s will, we experience His pleasure. When we are immersed in our will, we experience self-imposed displeasure.

I’m glad I didn’t get that probation job. That wasn’t His plan.

When has God done the same with you? Is He doing that now? Maybe it’s not a career issue, but some other area of your life that He is trying to redirect. As Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal 2:20).” This is God’s plan for us, that we be crucified with Him; that we nail our ambition to the cross for His ambition for us.

Play to win this week in the game that really counts!