Three Lessons About God's Plan for Our Lives

On a recent mission trip to Malawi, Africa, I learned three lessons about God’s plan for our lives. Things didn’t go how I expected at times, but God’s agenda was better than mine. I hope these lessons encourage you when God’s plan seems different than yours.

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00:00:00 Three Lessons about God’s Plan
00:02:50 Lesson One: God’s plan is better than ours.
00:17:46 Lesson Two: God’s plan often involves wondering what’s next.
00:33:10 Lesson Three: God’s plan requires staying married.
00:44:28 Andy and Lisa Langdon sharing their testimony

God’s Plan Is Better than Ours

I couldn’t help thinking that day about how much better God’s plan for our lives is than ours. God orchestrated many things for us. For example, if we didn’t have the flat tire:

I wouldn’t have visited the school.
Eddie wouldn’t have shared the gospel with the class
We wouldn’t have returned the following day to share the gospel again
I wouldn’t have had the idea to visit another school the following week because it went so well the first time. I’ll share more about this in a moment.
And, of course, I have no idea why one teacher happened to be having class on a holiday.
God’s plan is much better than ours!

God’s Plan Often Involves Wondering What’s Next

When Eddie and I returned to the school, I liked how he said, “If the Lord provides an opportunity, let’s do it.” This summarizes what ministry often feels like: we don’t know what will happen next. We just step out in faith and hope God provides an opportunity. It reminds me of Jonathan attacking the Philistines with his armor bearer. Listen to what he said:

1 Samuel 14:6 Jonathan said to the young man who carried his armor, “Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. IT MAY BE THAT THE LORD WILL WORK FOR US, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few.”

This is a great example of what we say in ministry: maybe the Lord will work for us. It also made me think of the situation with Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch:

Acts 8:26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. 27 And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 28 and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.

Heading to a desert probably wasn’t attractive, but Philip was willing to do it. He was given step one, but he didn’t know step two. He didn’t know what he was doing or what he was looking for. This is what it means to walk by faith. If we could see the second step, we wouldn’t need faith because faith is what we don’t see:

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

After taking the first step, Philip gets to the second step:

Acts 8:29 And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” 30 So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31 And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

You probably know the rest of the account. Philip preached the gospel to the Ethiopians so he could take it back to Ethiopia. I feel like this is how ministry often goes. We don’t know what will happen. We move in a certain direction, and then, hopefully, things open up so we can tell whether to keep going in that direction.

Our Tuesday Night Group

A simple example from our lives recently is our Tuesday night group. We said we would do it for a few weeks to see how it would go, but when people kept coming each week, including two or three new people most weeks, we decided to keep it going.

Stepping Out in Faith Isn’t License to Be Foolish

But stepping out in faith isn’t a license to be foolish. We should combine faith and wisdom. I think it was unwise for me to go to a place with some drunk guys playing pool. Here’s the video:

So here’s what happened: he did not want to take a photo with me. He wanted...

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