“The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.”
Proverbs 16:9
He doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.
Thank God, because I am a lot of things but in most endeavors I am not qualified.
And qualifications aside, they never stop us from dreaming. At least I do not believe they should.
I cannot recount the amount of times my dreams, goals or plans were outside the realm of “possible”… well I could but that would require more words than usually associated with blog posts, mine of which already run long.
In all honesty, according to someone’s scale somewhere, I am probably not qualified to write blog posts.
Unfortunately for them, I have always dreamt big. Always wanting to reach a little further than recommended. I can’t give you the exact date, but for as long as I can remember two quotes have continuously shaped me. They are not incredibly profound, at least not at first glance. They are not necessarily compromised of many words. They’re short and simple really.
“We walk by faith, not by sight.” – 2 Corinthians 5:7
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” – Norman V. Peale
Three sentences, twenty words and in my head they might as well be direct orders. With the faith they depict in the God I know, there is simply no additional conversation needed aside from which direction. Point the way, I am all in all the way.
Granted that doesn’t mean I always get my way.
You can ask my father, I have never been exceptionally talented at directions. So it’s no surprise that more often than not I think I’ve got the final destination all figured out – putting it in cruise control, full speed ahead – and then there happens to be a curve I didn’t quite see coming. Or curves. Much like the Appalachian Mountains really.
One of those curves hit this past week. Last Wednesday actually. I must say, God had been preparing me for it, but Lord knows it was still sharper than I had calculated. My heart tensed, momentary confusion and disorientation set in and a crashing reality flashed before my eyes.
And then Jesus took the wheel, He slowed it down and we took a moment to pull over. Because this wasn’t just one of those slight curves. You know the ones on back roads you mildly underestimate but still can manage to glide through with really no incident aside from the two extra heartbeats a minute.
No, this one changed our whole direction, it turned us onto a road I had known existed but wasn’t on my map as the way I had pictured us taking. No, this wasn’t my way at all. And we needed to take a minute, Jesus and I. Mainly because I needed to be still a moment and reassess what absolute truths I knew in contrast to what I no longer knew. Three truths emerged:
- God is good and He loves me and He has a plan.
- His plans are better than our best. Period.
- I still believe and have full faith in all of the above.
Quite frankly, I have a lot of plans. And a lot of different ways to get there. But ultimately it’s not my plan, it’s His. He is the way, the truth and the light.
He is the way.
So we are on a path which I hadn’t planned and which He had prepared. I am still all in, all the way. And I am still reaching further than “possible” allows, because with God anything is possible and I still dream one day to do the impossible.
**Thank You Sam Beasley on Unsplash for Photo
