Messages

Changed Plans

11.17.08

Many times we are not so quick to be grateful when God has interrupted our plans. At the time, the plans we have, may seem right and logical. But they were plans that, had they gone through, would have just been awful. In hindsight, we see how God has saved us from ourselves time and time again and how he truly knows what is best for our life.

Before he was one of the greatest apostles in the Bible, Paul also had his plans interrupted. Now his plans would arguably have had more disastrous consequences than mine, but he believed he was doing the right thing and was set on seeing them through. That is, until God interrupted.

In Acts 9, Paul was still known as Saul. He was an enemy of believers ("the Way") and was focused on persecuting anyone who called himself a Christian. He had heard that many had fled to Damascus, so he secured letters of arrest from the high priest and headed off in pursuit of them.

But on the road, God intervened and interrupted Saul's plans. The conversion was radical and news-making. Saul was blind for three days, and then his sight was restored through Anaias, who God told that Saul was his "chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel (Acts 9:15)."

When the scales fell from Saul's eyes, he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Later, he became known as the apostle Paul and was perhaps the greatest of all Christian missionaries. He also wrote 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament!

Can you imagine what type of effect his conversion must have had on the believers he had been seeking to persecute? Or how about the Gentiles to whom he ministered for years afterward? And then who knows how many countless readers of the Word from yesterday up until today-how about you and me? - have been blessed by Paul's testimony and his inspired writings?

These are God's amazing plans at work. And thankfully, oh so thankfully, he interrupts ours.

How did you respond the last time God interrupted your plans? Have you thanked him for saving you from your plans? Or how about from the plans you don't even know about, the ones that may have meant you harm that God interrupted? We will never know this side of heaven, all that God has done and is doing in our lives. Let's thank him for his perfect plans! And that we will be willing to accept, embrace and follow them.

Tim Carlisle