There are certain career fields where you can engage in your work, very confident of the outcome. Chemists, working in the confines of sterile surroundings, working with pure chemical compounds, can be very confident of what they will create when they combine certain compounds in certain volumes in certain orders. The same can be said with bakers, who can turn out a consistent product by following recipes precisely within a controlled environment. This allows them to establish a plan, then carry out the steps of that plan, with a high degree of confidence regarding the final result.
Life is not like chemistry or baking. Yes, so many people think it can be, constructing carefully crafted blueprints for success, and then seeking to faithfully execute those plans as created. And often, those people will be quite successful, especially when compared to people who started out from a similar position but had no such blueprint. Yet there are just so many variables when life takes place outside of a tightly controlled environment with more unknown and uncontrolled ingredients than we would consider. Things that were either unaccounted for or completely beyond our control will frequently interject, preventing us from executing our carefully laid plans, resulting in an unforeseen outcome.
I think about that when I consider the many different ways that Jesus performed the miracle of healing. If you study these miracles, you see that sometimes he touched people, sometimes they touched his garment, sometimes he added some external ingredient like mud to the process, and sometimes he simply commanded that the person be healed. For people who like to be able to create a blueprint and then execute the plan, this approach is maddening. I think that Jesus knew human nature well enough to know that if he had always followed the same pattern when healing someone, then we would conclude that the key to success was in the pattern, and not in the one truly responsible for the healing. We would have quickly misplaced our faith when looking for the desired outcome.
For all of our plans, the ultimate outcome is out of our hands and is dependent upon God. That doesn’t excuse us from planning or working, but our faith must be in the one who is in ultimate control, and not in our process or in ourselves. We can miss an important flight because of a freak weather event. A career opportunity can be sidetracked because of a cancer diagnosis. A planned relocation to a different state can be placed on hold because you meet the person of your dreams. God controls these wildcards, and God controls the outcome. What God wants, as demonstrated by the healings that Jesus performed, is that we put our faith and trust completely in Him, particularly when things have deviated from our plan.
Go ahead and plan, and then work to execute that plan. But never forget that God controls all of the cards. So if you find yourself experiencing something that you hadn’t accounted for, don’t panic or get disappointed. Instead, have a little faith that God had a better plan for you, and do your best to adapt to His plan, even if it means leaving your plan behind. After all, He is God, and we most definitely are not.
Peace and blessings – Pastor Aaron