When Things Change

If you are anything like me you live by a color-coded Google Calendar… that has a schedule from 7 am to 9 pm most days of the week. If this is you too, you also probably have a plan for what YOU WOULD LIKE your next 4 years of life to look like, or at least the next 6 months to a year. Unfortunately, these plans don’t always pan out the way we hope for them to. Whether these plans are 6 months out of 6 days out, things change.

Usually, God has a totally different plan and path for us to take than the one we think we want.

I know this can feel frustrating, scary, and discouraging in the moment when your plans begin to change. Often times your first reaction might be to hold on to those plans tighter and try to find a way to make them work. I urge you to begin to loosen your grip of what YOU WOULD LIKE your plans to look like. When you begin to loosen your grip on your plans and allow God to move, it will lead to greater. I can personally testify to this as I have watched it happen over and over again in my life. This has been my story with friendships that end, my last-minute college decisions, jobs, and the list goes on. Sometimes it seems like anything and everything that I try to plan in advance fails. But God has always had something better in store. Just because the path is changing does not mean that God is not working. It does not mean that it won’t happen, it just might look different than you might have thought it would.

Something I’ve noticed is that when I begin to loosen my grip on my plans big or small, I become interruptable. God can move in big ways in this space that is made when you loosen the grip on your plans.

We see in the gospel that Jesus was interruptable time and time again. This allowed for opportunities for great ministry and miracles.

• The story of the bleeding woman (Luke 8:40-48)- a man came to Jesus and begged him to heal his dying daughter. While Jesus was on his way to heal the daughter he paused to heal and speak with a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years and had reached out in a sea of people to touch his robe.

• The story of Jesus healing a man with an unclean spirit (Mark 1:21-28)- Jesus was teaching in a synagogue when a demon-possessed man cried out interrupting his teaching and Jesus performed an exorcism freeing him of a demon.

• The story of Jesus healing a paralyzed man (Mark 2:1-12)- Jesus was preaching the word to a crowded room of people. There was a paralyzed man with a loyal group of friends who carried him and climbed the roof to make a hole in the roof to lower him down to Jesus to be healed.

• The story of Jesus and Zachaeus (Luke 19:1-10)- when Jesus was traveling through a town and Zachaeus a chief tax collector climbed into a tree to just get a chance to see Jesus. Then Jesus called him down from the tree to invite himself to stay at Zachaeus’s home.

These are just a few examples of how Jesus allowed himself to be interuptable but there are many more. These are also examples of how when we loosen our grip God can move in big ways. This might look like our plans completely changing from what we thought we would like to happen. I encourage you to ask yourself what plan are you holding on to that might not be God’s? Are you allowing yourself to be interruptable for God to move? What might God be working on in your life here and now?

- mackenzie

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.