God Has a Wonderful Life for Your Plan

Dear Trekker,

It happened quite a few years ago though I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was sitting in one of my favorite chairs reading Philip Yancey’s “What’s so Amazing About Grace”, when it hit me! Yes, God has a wonderful plan for my (and your) life, but more importantly, God has a wonderful Life for my plan.”

Let me back up a bit. I was at Wheaton College (IL) in the early 50s when a young, dashing man in white buck shoes, white trousers and a blue blazer hit the campus, recruiting for a new organization he had bought into being entitled, Campus Crusade for Christ. He was a California boy, who looked and operated “Madison avenue like”, and cut quite a swath through Wheaton’s campus for a few days. Years later I was privileged to meet and speak with Bill Bright on numerous occasions. He drew up a religious tract entitled “The Four Spiritual Laws” which has proven to be a valuable evangelistic tool to thousands upon thousands these last 50 years. Personally, I consider Bill Bright to have been one of the most illustrious men of God of the 20th century.

However, I always had a glitch in my thinking about spiritual law #1… God offers you a wonderful plan for your life! Not that it wasn’t true! It is true! But that night, more importantly, something Yancey said triggered the Holy Spirit seemingly to say to me, “Yes, but God has a wonderful LIFE, and that is the plan!” A play on words, Jim, you say. Yes, but much more!

So when I sit in a chapel as I did recently and hear a great sermon on John 14, the intriguing dialogue between our Lord and the disciple Thomas, I ponder again our Master’s words, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

There is something about the word “plan” that conjures up the oft repeated admission, “If I only knew what His plan is, I would do it.” So we feverishly try to discern a plan or road map for our lives. Intellect reigns, and trust and will, recede.

Well trekker, we don’t have to achieve, we simply receive His life.

Don’t get me wrong. Planning is good. Without plans we are whirling in the winds of life. Options rapidly pass by. But if heaven or happiness is not primarily a place but a Person, our plans must ignite and enflame a relationship, never define a goal in and of itself. These words of Thomas from the text of John 14 really strike a cord: “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” How human, and how short sighted! Man’s reason says you must know the end goal to map out the path to get there. Divine reason says, walk with me and I will take you where you need to go! In the former, reason is the key. But reason is only as reliable as revelation lays the foundation. In the latter, faith and trust are essential.

Somewhere along the way, since the Enlightenment of the 18th century, the church I fear, substituted the Holy Scriptures for the exciting ride on the back of a powerful, intrepid steed known as the Word of God, Jesus, the Divine logos who entered our world and said, “follow me”. But He is a tough act to roadmap His path. We would do better to get on His back and ride Him, hanging on for dear life, because He is good, yet anything but predictable and safe. Look at His own life! Not much by human standards, but totally revolutionary in changing the world! What a ride!

It is as if we say… “if I only knew what God’s will is or what He wanted, or if I knew the “text/plan” well enough, I would do it.” No, we know. We don’t [do as we know]! Romans, Ch. 7, is our guide here.)

Trekker, God’s will is not purposes, goals, places, things or other people. God’s will is a Person, the only begotten of the Father. He shares His life with us, a life to be lived, experienced in and by faith in the One who says, as repeated by John the apostle, “I have come (to earth) that you may have life, and have it more abundantly (more than you could ever plan or dream without Me at the center.)” There is no life apart from Jesus. “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures (Old Testament) that testify about me, yet, you refuse to come to Me to have life.” (John 5:39) Because it is second nature for many to think of the Bible as the Word of God, it becomes a rule book; it unconsciously takes the place Jesus alone has; and we become Bible dependent rather than Jesus dependent; robbed of the joy of Jesus, replacing it with the cold, authoritarian rationalism of “God’s law” instead of God’s power unleashed by the Truth of the person of Jesus and His life-giving Spirit. We must “experience” Jesus in our world today, in lives of fullness despite any circumstances to the contrary, if we are to affirm and reinforce the Divine inspiration and impact of Scripture.

God does have a wonderful life for our plan! Frank Capra was right! “It’s a wonderful life”… to be lived, experienced, enjoyed (joy over and over again), yes, shouted from the roof tops! Trekker, do you believe it? Are you living with faith so close to the surface of your life that it continually ‘must’ break out in the sunshine of exuberance? Gee, trekker, I hope so. Exercise your faith. Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace and presence in our lives, so certain of God’s favor and blessing that one will risk death repeatedly, trusting in Jesus. “This is life, getting to know Jesus and the power of His resurrection within you, and the fellowship of His sufferings, inevitably, about you” (Phil 3:10a).

Trekker, don’t waste too much time seeking the perfect plan, but rather launch the life! There is life in Jesus alone… trusting and abiding in His love and commitment to us. Read the Scriptures as God’s love letter to you personally! Live out the mystical paradox of “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Go for it. Climb that mountain. Don’t look back except to be reminded of God’s grace. Look up, out, and forward! The best is yet to be, for Christ ever lives in me! May this be the mantra of our life, “His life for our plan!”

Your trekker brother,

Jim Meredith