Sunday Night Reflections (The Week After...)

It was so good to see a LOT of fresh faces in church this morning... After last week, I kind of wondered if there would be anybody that would come back. Before services, I was able to walk around and greet several people that I didn't recognize. All of them were so positive about coming back to church. That was encouraging!

Something that you may not realize is that the service that we did this morning was the service that was PLANNED for last week. Reggie and I consider that a God thing because we had several conversations about service elements leading up to Back to Church Sunday. We wanted that day to be WAY good. As plans were made, we felt like it was going to be really effective. However, Reggie and I had several conversations about the week AFTER Back to Church Sunday (yesterday) and Reggie wasn't really thrilled with what he had planned.

That's one of those weird things in ministry. You make plans, but you realize that God holds the final say. I talked a little about this this morning. You can't do what we do without planning. Choir, Orchestra, Soloists, Tech just won't come together if there's not a system in place. HOWEVER, we also live in the spiritual side of things where we realize that sometimes our plans don't happen the way we had them planned. To put it simply, we make plans for what's going to happen KNOWING that God may change those plans.

For example, the last two weeks. We made plans for last week. Those plans did NOT include the lights going out!! (God changed OUR plans). We had also made plans for this week (even though we weren't thrilled with them.) God changed OUR plans and we were able to shift our plans for last week (which we were excited about) to this week (which we were not excited about.)

I said before that's one of those weird things in MINISTRY, but it's not just relegated to ministry. NO...this is a truth in life as well. How many times have we had our plans made for God to throw a roadblock in the way and suddenly our plans change? In those moments, we usually shake our fist at God and say, "I can't believe you're not going along with my plans." However, when we look back on our life, we realize that those "changed" plans are what got us to where we need to be today.

I don't think that's an argument for being lazy. I believe that God calls us to plan, but then He requests that we constantly submit those plans to him for HIS WILL to be done.

Proverbs 16:9--In his heart, a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.

GREAT advice from the wisdom book! I can be guilty of making plans and then asking God to bless my plans. I don't think that's how it works. I make plans and then submit them to God for review and revision. He has the right to scrap everything I've done. I have the responsibility to follow His plans regardless of my own!!

What about you? Do you struggle with allowing God to be the "determiner of your steps"? When you make plans, do you expect God to just "rubber stamp" your plans because you're so good at planning?

Sunday was a great day...I look forward to what God has in store for next week!!!