God’s Kind of Perfect

Tags

God's Plan, life, life change, marriage, perfect, providence

[From Julie]Nothing is perfect nor is anyone able to be perfect, however I think perfection is something we make it.  When Noel and I got married I thought we were perfect together and we would build a life that was perfect because we had the only thing that really matters, we loved each other.  I married a teacher and I was a nurse.  Perfect.  We’ll both get jobs and we’ll have lots of money to do all those wonderful things I was planning in my head.  My perfect family was two boys and a girl, preferably in that order.  We would have a beautiful home and beautiful kids and things would be, well perfect.

Unfortunately, life happens and the job thing didn’t really work out as imagined for me (it took me seven years to get a nursing job). Never-the-less we still had just enough to get by.  I worked a job that I really didn’t like and didn’t pay well.  Noel was teaching, which was a miracle in and of itself, and we were finding out how difficult his choice of vocation really was.   Things were tight but we moved on.  We had a rough start to our parenting goals with a late miscarriage and the difficulty of dealing with that.  We didn’t vacation and we got by on one car.  Still I thought things were pretty great.

The life we have now bears no resemblance to what I thought would be perfect when I was in my early 20’s.  I’m married to a pastor not a teacher, and we have four wonderful boys (two of which happen to be twins) and no girls.  It’s perfect.  It’s God’s kind of perfect.  It’s what he has planned for us.

As my life changed so did my view of perfect.  I would not have chosen to change my plan however I see the beauty of this plan.  I never would have chosen the road of miscarriage, of losing my mom at such a young age, or even having twins. 

Look Busy

Tags

End of the World, Eschatology, God, God's Plan, Jesus' return, Rapture

Today Ed Stetzer wrote on his blog,

On May 19, 1780 the sky over Connecticut turned dark – so dark that they needed candles to see at noon. The darkness spread as far as they could see, every town in the area that they could contact experienced the same thing. It was shocking, frightening, and unexplainable to the people of that day (later, historians would explain that it was a combination of smoke from Canadian forest fires, cloud cover, and fog). But, to them, all they knew was that the sun was blotted out at noon– the end must be at hand.

The Connecticut legislature was unsure if they should meet or go home with their families and face the end. They would have to bring in candles to conduct even the most basic business. But, Abraham Davenport (later made famous by a poem) stood up and expressed it clearly. He stood up and proclaimed:

I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face,
No faithless servant frightened from my task,
But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls;
And therefore, with all reverence, I would say,
Let God do His work, we will see to ours.
Bring in the candles!

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that captured this thought nicely: Jesus is returning, Look Busy!

(I will write something on rapture tomorrow; before 6pm PST 🙂

A Wonderful Plan

Tags

Dependence on God, God's Plan, prosperity gospel

Bill Bright is famous for writing a number of tracts and books that featured four spiritual laws. The first one is, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29: 11

Used by modern “Wonderful Plan” evangelicals, this verse is often used to promise vain temporal blessings to potential converts. A person is ‘won’ to Christ with the promise of God’s great plans. The reason these great plans have not come true is the present sin in a person’s life. Once the sin is removed, God’s plan can be put into motion and the blessings will come in full measure.

How come nobody quotes Jeremiah 21: 10, “’For I have set my face against this city for harm and not for good,’ declares the Lord. ‘It will be given into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire’”?